Until the Fall of Night
by Cobray
Summary: Prelude to Ulduar. Darkness and horror fester in the north and begins to reach out across Azeroth as those who guard it succumb to its power. A group of old comrades ruined once before are brought together for a strange mission, and find themselves in possession of terrifying knowledge that will take them beyond the laws of nature, back to the places that haunt them still.
1. Prologue

The world is breaking.

I can feel it in the cracks of the stone under my feet walking the empty halls of the complex, in the crackle and buzz of static in the communication channels, in every breath I take of air that seems to be stagnating more and more with each second that passes by.

Everything is different now. The chambers used to ring with noise and motion, when we had the power and time to spare and the avatars indulged us. We had thoughts and feelings and in some cases smalls wishes or dreams that we kept close to ourselves. Now in these dark days while the stone and marble and steel crumbles underneath us everything we have is diverted to necessary systems, those same thoughts and dreams labelled as _superfluous to requirement/purpose_ and replaced with combat systems or calculating modules, or simply left blank entirely, holes in our minds. Some do not even know what they are missing, only a small spark left to remind them that they are not whole. If they were living creatures they might have taken their own lives to remove that feeling, but we have no such freedom.

I am lucky, one of the few that requires more than simple instructions to do my job. There are a few of us left and we still talk together sometimes when our master's orders carry us by each other. My own purpose is general and tailored to our steadily-deteriorating situation, so I have an excuse to wander throughout the entirety of the inner complex, seeking out and cleansing small imperfections and intrusions. Sometimes the job takes long enough for one of my old comrades to find me, and we can talk, even if the topics are limited and depressing. The clockworks that once buzzed and hummed with a million moving parts is slower now, the machines it puts out imperfect and prone to crazed outbursts, the metal inside them tarnished and impure. Servitors try to brush away the rust that grows ever-thicker on the walls but their own programming is flawed. They fall into gaps between the gears or mash themselves to ruin against closed doors that their faceted eyes cannot recognise as impassable. The carefully-maintained forests are falling to rot, the greenery turning from vibrant emeralds and beautiful autumn oranges to sickly dark shades and drooping leaves. The treants creak as they stumble around, the barks of their bodies cracking and splintering. Only a few of the dryads and more specialised creations are left to maintain that area. Elsewhere ice now covers the cavern walls so thick and so cold it burns to the touch, the rock-servitors rumbling around slowly, and if a hand or shoulder touches the wall it is torn out and left behind. Metal halls are filled with lightning so intense I cannot gain access, and the few servitors that emerge from it spit static from their bodies so powerful the rest of us give them wide berth lest an arc crackle from them to us and fry us alive. Their master has left them, gone out of the complex after his betrayal and failure, and now his thralls wander the corridors like metal ghosts, purposeless.

We do not even try to access the lower levels anymore. The door has been sealed with everything the four masters working together could muster, and we have turned away from it. We are afraid. Once, weeks ago, I approached it thinking I could hear something coming from behind. Perhaps some servant unlucky enough to have been left behind when the seals came down and the lower levels were cut off from the surface complex. What I found I could barely understand. The metal of the door itself is rotten now, and seemed almost half-alive. It was carved with as much skill and precision as we could manage, but the pattern has been twisted and warped into a giant copper face that taunts us. Some black liquid seeps from the eye-carvings and evaporates on the ground, etching and pitting the marble where it touches. I thought once to get a servitor to gather a sample for study but nobody dared approach it even on direct orders, some small fragment of self-preservation left in their programming refusing even a direct order.

Whatever personnel we left on the other side is alone now, to maintain the seals as best they can before the corruption takes them. I think even as the masters sealed it up they knew it was never anything more than wishful thinking. Either some desperate attempt to ignore it and hope it would go away on its own, or a more insidious and intelligent madness that made them abandon their duties. Either way the rot at the heart of this world begins on the other side of that massive impenetrable door, and none can open it but our lords who no longer listen to reason, and certainly do not listen to us.

Something must be done.

-xx-

We stand on the cold cliffs of the Eyrie, the four out of five that still command enough importance to retain thought and free will. Loke and Orion can no longer go to their homes, kept out by the ice and thunder that would freeze or crack them if they attempted to return to their masters for new instructions. Saga is here because inside her task is done, the forests she watched over and guarded now nothing more than a collection of decaying tree-trunks and composting dirt on the ground. Kore has remained inside the clockworks, trying to tend for her master as he sits at the centre of the clockworks, creating ever more bizarre and dangerous machines. I stand outside with the other three, one more task to complete before I can allow my brethren into the world beyond the snows.

The plan is decided. Kore has provided well for us, beautiful and perfect simulacrums that will follow us out into the world outside these invisible walls and into the worlds of the species we've studied. They are almost indistinguishable from the real thing, our eyes and ears and mouths, going where we cannot. Loke and I will travel onto the landmass that contains the dead World Tree. He will see whether anything still lives in its shadow, while I travel farther south to the sands that once cradled a civilisation and may yet hold its remnants. Orion and Saga will head to the other, him to the north ravaged by plague but still registering the signs of life, and her to the still-green fields of the southern hemisphere to see if the plague's halting is more than mere chance. The plan is desperate, more of hope than certainty, but we have no other options now. We were created to serve our master's needs, and what need could be greater than this?

The complexes here monitor the heartbeat of the planet and more than a dozen times that heartbeat has been tapped, interrupted, diverted, or made corrupt. When this happens it is the job of the masters to restore the world's pulse, to find the beings arrogant enough to think they could control a world and destroy them, or correct whatever natural imbalance threatens it. But these last few incidents, while they stayed in the complex, that job has been completed by some other entity. Ancient gods have arisen and been driven back, old evils have been confronted and disposed of. And not by us.

Between the four of us canvassing the world we will find these creatures, gods or mortals or whatever they are, and plead with them to come north, come north and end this rotting darkness.

-xx-

Above us the great dragon roars as the other three set off for the long tortuous voyage down the mountains, to the cold continent beyond and finally to the sea. She crows out into the wind, massive steel-reinforced wings flapping above as if waving them off and wishing them well. A product of the masters of steel and lightning, before one entombed himself into the clockworks and the other struck out into the mountains to stew in his own failure and loss, the ur-drake was meant as a guard and watchdog for the complex, should the stealth-fields fail. The fields I sabotage as my friends vanish into the blizzards below.

It only takes a minute. I can feel it in my marble bones as the power flowing through the outer walls is interrupted, my teeth set on edge as the remaining force flowing through the circuits suddenly find no place to go and dissipate into the air. If any creature is mad enough to be standing in the mountains now, they would watch as suddenly an impenetrable glacier faded away and was replaced by towering slabs of marble and steel, rising out of massive walls carved in power-runes and circuits. When our saviours arrive they will see us up here, clear as day. Assuming my theories and calculations are correct and they exist, and that we can hunt them down and find them. Assuming the complex does not fall to rot and madness in the meantime. Assuming the fifth and final overwatcher does not return and see the corruption and wipe us all away to start afresh. Assuming so many things.

The path ahead is long and winding but I set out with the wind at my back. I spare once last glance back at the golden majesty of my home, and hope that I might one day see it again. In the meantime I will go south to the blazing sands, to see if the desert races that once lived there may be the saviours I hope to find. If not I pray that one of my comrades will have better luck, and find our deliverers.

Find them soon.


	2. A Rusted Blade

_Icy hands in the dark. I've been here before, once too often._

"_Do we go on?" She asks me, clutching her staff like a drowning woman holding onto an oar to stay afloat. I want to say no, take us back and out, find some way back to the boats and get this armour off. Armour that feels like tiny hands crawling over my skin._

_I try to say _no_ but the words are twisted and come out differently. All the times I've tried to say that single word and always the same thing instead, as I re-watch the scene for the hundredth, the thousandth time. "We go on."_

_Icy hands dragging us away into the cold one by one. I'm walking forward, every step making too-loud noises as the candles grow dimmer with each passing moment. Blue pin-pricks in the darkness ahead and I can't tell anymore whether it's his eyes taunting us or my own brain finally betraying me and throwing up imaginary monsters to go along with the real ones. The air is thickening poison and we only have enough untainted water left for sips, and enough meat for occasional bites._

"_Do we go on?"_

_Not even anything to jump out at us down here, far below the upper levels. Only that cold pair of eyes watching us from around every corner. The walls shift and move around us whenever I think we may be nearer the surface, slopes upward ending in brick ceilings that make no sense and walls that have door-arches but no doors. Ten lost to hunger and five more to despair and only the four of us left walking the endless black corridors while starving angry ghosts whisper at us. Always those whispers from the walls, from that day and every night in these dreams._

"_Do we go on?"_

_Can you hear it, Elias?_

"_Do we go on?"_

_The ice is calling you home._

* * *

"Don't do it."

The rain pummels down on my head like it has a grudge. The tatty hood that started the night covering my head against a light drizzle was now a sopping rag that hung off my back and weighed me down. I can barely see the man in front of me from the water in my eyes, but I don't dare take a hand from my sword to wipe it away. He's scared of me. Exhausted and out of options he's become desperate, and desperate men do dangerous things. One hand is holding a dagger that looks like it couldn't cut food, but the other is making shapes in the air and suddenly I can feel it, that static-y cling of magic somewhere close by. It's fizzing and guttering in the kid's head and he's working himself up to throw lightning in a rainstorm.

I wasn't even after the stupid bastard, was perfectly content to let him go if it meant I could reach his boss. But a stray fireball in the wrong direction and that option was gone, the sergeant made that perfectly clear after the dust had settled and we had our man. Somewhere in the city behind me there's a kid crying in the cathedral infirmary crying because his daddy is missing half the flesh from his face. I stare into the eyes of this Defias shithead and promise myself after tonight is over I'll have a long talk with the informant who said the smugglers would be strictly muscle-and-blade, no casters. Assuming I can get out of this with my nerve centre intact. There's thunder above us now and this rain isn't letting up. For a second I think I hear footsteps behind me in the darkness, but I don't dare take my eyes off the man in front of me. In Old Town footsteps at your back in the night is either a child-thief going for your coin-purse or a man going for your jugular, but the fuss tonight should keep the smarter criminals indoors.

"Don't…_don't come any closer!_"

Shit, he's going to do it. I drop my blade so it's pointing down at the ground and not his throat. A cheap piece of steel the sergeant gave to me when I enlisted, nothing like what I was used to, but it's all I have right now. "Just calm down kid, neither of us wants to get hurt here."

It's arcing across his arm now, sparks and lines of electricity that jumps and flickers as the thunder above us roars. _"Just let me go!"_ I can't do that and tell him as much. "I'm a _mage! _You know what I can do to you!?"

If he thinks I'm just another guardsman that's his loss. I can feel the sword in my hand. It's straight enough and the distance isn't too far. I should be able to…he's not looking at me anymore. Why is…

_Footsteps._

I swing around and catch the eyes of the other man and the flash of steel he's holding. My body acts before my brain catches up and I'm already swinging my own sword around to catch the dagger going for my kidneys. _Focus._ He crashes into me and I feel something in my chest strain as my blade catches his and we stumble backwards. He wasn't expecting me to catch him. He looks at me wide-eyed and there's a half second where neither of us are moving. He thought this was just another old slow Guard shuffling towards retirement, certainly not someone guild-trained, and certainly not someone as good as me. I take my hand off the sword and swing up as hard as I can and hear something break in the man's face. He falls back and the tingling's stronger now, feels like pinpricks on my skin. _Forget it_. I don't follow up, let the new guy step away holding his hands to his face and duck sideways. _Something_ blue and hot flashes past me and for a moment I can almost see my reflection in the pouring rain as lightning goes through the space I was occupying a second ago.

"My_ face! _Goddamn bastard got my_ FACE!"_

Noseless comes back up screaming, angry, swinging at the air. The mage is still behind me (_"Get him! Hold him still!"_) but I ignore it, no way someone that green can cast again without a few seconds of concentration. I step forward at the same time as the dagger-wielding moron and throw my sword down as hard as I can into his foot. He screams out and trips as he tries to lift his impaled foot from the ground, and goes down hard. If it had been just him I might have left him there to run away, but there's flashes and heat behind me and I know I only have a second. The armour I'm wearing is cheap, standard issue from the Guard smithy, but it does the job. I kick as hard as I can and the Defias man's leg bends in a way it shouldn't and he screams out in pan as the bone snaps.

"_STAY BACK!"_

The mage-thief isn't even thinking of getting away now, and the light is red this time, not blue. The same light from back in the bar that went wild and exploded across a civilian, just someone just going out for a drink in the wrong bar at the exact wrong time. I almost slip on the soaking cobbles, grabbing my sword back out of the fallen man's foot and throwing it as hard as I can, no time for finesse or accuracy as the air between us heats up like a furnace door opening, and every crack in the walls around us is thrown into light as fire wraps itself around his hands and rushes towards me. I see is a flash of steel as my sword flies true towards the man, ringed by a circle of hellfire, and all I do is watch as…

The light fades like a candle blown out as the steel goes through his gut. There's a second where we're both stood there staring at each other, the expression on the mage's face going from scared to something like puzzled. Then his eyes roll up into his head and he collapses to the ground with a _crack_ as his skull meets the pavement. I gasp for air and get a mouthful of water instead as I reach into my jerkin for the small cylinder. My luck holds, for once, as I pull the tiny rope the spark catches and the flare shoots up through the downpour. There's a pulsing blue light in the air above the city for a moment, before it's swallowed by the rain. I can hear groaning from the man below me and I give a warning kick. He doesn't move again. From the fallen mage across the alley there's nothing at all, and blood is running down his torso where my sword vanishes into his robes, like red tentacles sliding across the grey pavement.

I feel sick.

* * *

"Are you alright laddie?"

I open my eyes to see something massive above me, blocking out the world. Sky-blue eyes peer at me through a mass of weathered pink flesh and red hair, and my vision fixes itself for me to see the old and haggard face of Brorn Ironfield staring down. I've woken up to nicer faces and I barely resist the urge to reach up and push him away. It wouldn't do for me to shove my commanding officer. "I'm fine, just a little raw." My skin feels tingly where the fire ran across it. I'll have a peeling tan there within the day, I just know it. I swing my legs out and sit up, a little too fast. The world spins around me for a moment, and then the cool white-painted pricks of the Stormwind Guard infirmary come into focus. There're quiet voices coming from beds around me, telling me I wasn't the only casualty of the midnight raid. I can see Harns is three beds across me with both arms in a sling, but happy enough as his wife sits by his side spooning hot soup into his mouth. Felswick is opposite me reading a book with one eye, bandages across half her face and totally absorbed in whatever is on the page. There's a curtain drawn across one bed with a couple of shadows moving across the cloth, nurses attending whoever's there, and I hope that it's nobody I know.

The sergeant puts a hand on my midriff and steadies me before I can keel back over. "Steady on lad, you've had a long night."

_Lad._ I'm halfway into my third decade and nobody's called me lad in years. But then most of the humans in Stormwind are _lads_ to dwarves I guess. "Not as long a night as some people did," I reply, thinking about the mage and his would-be rescuer.

The dwarf shrugs. "Aye well, it couldn't be helped. For now there're two less pairs of hands with blades in 'em." I nod. It sounds heartless but nobody in the guard sympathises with the Defias. Too much spilled blood and dead bodies between the city and the criminal gang.

"Are they…?" I ask tentatively. It was a clean operation and the sergeant knows it, but any death inside city walls has to be accounted for, even if it's a Guardsman taking down a wanted outlaw in a city-sanctioned raid.

Brorn runs a hand through his beard, which takes a while since it goes halfway down his body. "Just broken bones for the one," he says. "The other's in the cathedral, no news yet." _Not dead, but close_, is what he means_._ He claps a hand on my shoulder and I wince at the impact. "Don't fret if the dumb bastard croaks sonny. We've got your back."

Pictures come bubbling up from deep inside my memory at those words, the automatic support of a fellow soldier. A hand on my shoulder and similar words years in the past, faces and names I haven't seen in years. A chill down my spine that's never left me no matter how warm I try to stay. There's a voice in the back of my head that bubbles up through the locks I have in there-

_Brothers to the end, Elias._

-and I shove it down where it came from, part of my life I locked away when I left the old guild and joined the city guard. I stand up, the dizziness gone and a vision of a warm bed in my own home running through my mind. I tell Brorn I'll handle the aftershocks from the Defias raid when I get in tomorrow and I'm almost, _almost _out of the door when his voice comes from behind me.

"By the way, someone was looking for you earlier tonight."

"Who?" I ask automatically, and curse my stupid mouth. Remnant of an old life that said _yes_ too many times when it should have said _no._

Brorn looks thoughtful as I turn back to look at him. "Some lassie said she wanted a few words. Something about old friends and a drink you owed her."

My stomach turns just a little bit and I make a guess: "A little shorter than me. Black hair in a long ponytail, green eyes? Err…" I struggle to try and say more. How do you explain a heart-shaped face to a man whose people all follow the same outline, and that outline is best described as _craggy_? "Looks younger than me?" Good enough.

Brorn thinks for a second and I can see he wants to say _humans look alike to me lad_ and doesn't. "Sounds about right, but-"

I sigh. "Small scar across her cheek, smiled all the time she was talking to you?"

Brorn clicks his fingers. "Aye, that'll be the one."

_Shit. Sara._

That's more than I want to handle right now, the day after getting my ribs bruised and coming within one puddle of being electrocuted _and_ incinerated. "Right, thanks sarge." I wave a goodbye to the other guards still in the infirmary as I open the door to the outside. It's coming up on morning now, the sun shining out over the walls that surround the city, casting awkward shadows across the buildings inside. Dawn in Stormwind creeps up the outer walls and assaults the city like an invading force, the light edging through alleys and buildings built too close together. Some parts of the old town see sunlight a good hour after the rest.

"Go carefully lad," I hear Brorn say as the wooden door shuts behind me, and I'm left outside alone.

* * *

When they built the (second) city of Stormwind they wanted to avoid the mistakes that let the Orcs turn the first one into a ruined shell. Engineers sat down with generals and mages and they planned out a haven that could withstand an invading army, as well as be the centre of commerce and civilisation for the entire Eastern Kingdoms. What this meant on paper was city-walls high enough so no invading horde would be able to even sneak up close without being seen and so hardy that even if they did manage to get there they wouldn't be able to do much but look up at inches-thick stonework. Include a guard force large enough to police the citizenry as well as become a militia in case said Orcs ever managed to get in and they thought that was a job well done, and started building.

When I started living here I could see what those plans had ended up with: A city that could never grow outward because there were bloody great walls in the way, and a huge force of guards that spend a lot of their time doing nothing but training against practise dummies and using wooden swords on each other. Over the years Stormwind had become steadily more labyrinthine as people moved in and available space shrunk, and new houses crept closer and closer to the rivers that divided the city and any space they could build in, until Old Town had become a maze of streets and alleys that you could lose yourself in. Perfect for the small criminals that cities bred like flies, and perfect for people who just wanted to blend anonymously into the city and be left alone.

I'd shucked off my armour at the Guard-tower and walked home in civvies, the streets filling with people as merchants, guildsmen and anyone else crazy enough to be awake in the small hours of the morning went about their business, the occasional metal suit of armour standing around a corner as the morning Guardsmen made their rounds. In a few hours it would be murderously crowded but for now the streets were clear enough to let me stew in my thoughts without knocking into people coming the other way, and clear enough for me to spot I was being followed.

She wasn't being particularly subtle about it, and I debated just stopping and turning around to wait for her to come up to me like a normal person. But there was a warm bed in my small house and I desperately wanted to be in it. Maybe if I ignored her she'd take the hint and go away.

I kept walking and caught flashes of her from the corners of my eyes. Shadowing behind a merchant a few steps back, casually strolling behind me in my blind-spot, hopping across tiles above me, her feet making soft sounds as she stepped lightly over the city roofs. All done with that little smile on her face that I'd once learned to appreciate and that drove so many other people to distraction or anger. I threaded through small streets and alleys that became more packed as the city yawned and woke up, and every step she stayed with me. Finally I laid hands across the small wooden door leading into my home, a dead-end in a back alley so far from the street the light was still hazy in the sky, and stopped to turn around and face the street.

"Care for a drink?" I said to the young black woman stood directly in front of me, shoulder-length black hair waving slightly in the morning breeze, and a smile on a face marred only by a light scar that went from her right ear down to just before her lips. Anyone passing by might have mistaken us for a heroic Guardsman and an appreciative and star-struck citizen. But all my heroics were long in the past and could stay there, and I'd never known this woman to have missed a step over anything, certainly not over me.

"Thought you'd never ask," Sara replied.

* * *

"Spill it."

"You're not even going to let me liquor you up first?" she said with a smile from across the wooden table.

Hundreds of men and women had seen that smile, and the response tended to vary depending on how well you knew Sara Whitgens. Those who didn't know her at all saw what they wanted to see. More than one would-be romantic had spent hours talking to the pretty young amber-eyed thing who looked so interested in what they were saying, only for her to brush them off at the end of a night. Other soldiers and guildsman tended to mistake it for innocence and dismissed her as one more useless guild rookie with a useless dream of glory or patriotism. Those who knew her a little better and who worked under her saw unpleasant work ahead of them when it appeared, and to those above it was a smile that bordered on a lack of respect but never quite crossed the line into insolence. To the people that truly knew her though it was simply how she was. Sara looked for amusement wherever she went, and the world always provided.

I waved away the barmaid who had come across the empty building to serve us and sent her back to the bored-looking owner. "No amount of drink'll ease whatever blow you're planning Sara," I said.

"Does the noble Stormwind Guard refuse to share a drink with the mercenary guildsman? You're no fun anymore Elias." Her lips shifted from a mischievous cat's smile to something softer. "How's life on the outside?"

I shrugged and fidgeted in my chair. This wasn't a discussion I'd ever enjoy having and she knew it. They had all asked me, at one point or another. Usually after they thought they'd got me drunk enough to get my _real_ answer. I gave her what I gave them all. "It's nice. Quieter."

And just like the others she didn't believe me. It was all she was getting though and she knew it. She leaned back in the chair which creaked, drawing the attention of the only other occupant that wasn't an employee. The bar she'd led me to was deep in Old Town, all wooden scaffolding and cheap tables that were sticky with old booze. The kind you went to because you'd lost your shoes and shirt and the other, more respectable, bars wouldn't let you in. Still, it would be full by sundown. Stormwind had no shortage of cheap drunks. "We're just here to talk a little, that's all."

"_We?_ You and young bright 'n' clean over there?" I jerked a thumb at the man by the entrance, and 'man' was being nice about it. He'd come in after Sara and I, and now stood by the door like a faithful puppy. He looked like he was desperately trying to come off as stoic and experienced but with a mop of brown hair that looked like his mother still cut it and a face I could only call soft he wasn't pulling it off. "Are you only letting you outside the Guildhall with a guard now? Is he even a full member?"

Sara glanced over at her escort and her smile twitched for just a second. "Yeah, well, the old man wanted two of us to talk to you, and he's my understudy for the year." Her tone said what she thought of her young partner. He didn't look like he had even started using a sharp blade on his own hair yet, let alone another person.

I looked at the clock over the bar and watched it count out another hour in which I'd gotten no closer to getting some actual sleep. "So what's-"

"They want you to come back in, Elias," Sara said, cutting me off before I could say another word. The smile was gone suddenly, in the way it did when she was about to do something she really, really didn't want to.

I spent a second thinking over everything that could mean, and didn't find any answers. "I'm out," I said as calmly as I could. There was something squirming down in my gut, across the old wound there. "I quit, remember? I did my 'one last mission' and handed in my papers and blade. They can't just-"

"Doesn't matter," Sara replied quickly like she was trying to shove the words out of her mouth. "The leadership want you back in. Today. The guards at the gate know to expect us."

Leadership. That might mean… "The old master?"

Sara shook her head. "No; Bramford. Asked me to come here and deliver a message to you."

He wouldn't have said it like that. Nowhere near so polite. Now I knew why Sara was so skittish. Even though she was solid guildsman through-and-through, she hated being under someone else's thumb. The old guild master knew how to work with a personality like that, and was willing to give a free spirit some leeway if it was backed up with a record as good as Sara's was. He knew how to get a dozen different people and mould them into a team that flowed together like water. Not like Bramford. Bramford wanted the organisation to run like a well-oiled machine with every cog in its place, and Sara was all grit that bounced wherever it wanted. "Did he say what about?"

I had expected nothing, or for her exasperation and irritability to tell me what he _really_ said, but instead Sara reached into her jacket and took out a folded piece of paper, which she waved in front of her face between two fingers like it was something distasteful. "I'm to give you this."

I reached for it and for a second my hand touched hers. Her skin felt warm against mine, and I wondered how cold I felt to her. "Thanks," I muttered.

Sara stood and dropped some coins on the table. The smile was back again as she gestured to the raw recruit standing by the door. She looked back at me for a second and the smile was something more than amusement, something less than wistful. "See you soon Elias. Come home."

I stared at her as she left, the inn's door swinging open to reveal the sunlight beyond, and the population of Stormwind moving through the streets. Then it swung shut again, and the noise became muffled like someone had put a blanket over it. Or a pillow. I sat there in the smoky candlelit darkness of the bar and stared at the tiny slip of parchment she'd handed over to me. I debated between opening it and throwing it into the fire on my way out. Something about it put me off. It was a link back there, to my old life, the old guild and to Sara and Duran and Sildri (_not, don't think of that, ignore that name) _and all of the others still there. Her parting words bounced around my skull like a ball-bearing against rubber.

_Come home._

I opened it.

It wasn't a message. At least not one I could understand as I looked at the unfolded slip. It was a crude drawing, an outline of a human limb. Like somebody had put their hand palm-down and fingers-splayed onto the parchment and simply drawn around it in heavy ink. That wasn't all they had done though. Inside the outline of the hand, scribbled over and over again, were the teethed wheels that the gnomes and dwarves used in their powered constructions. A human hand, filled with gears. I turned it over but there was nothing on the other side. Just that image.

I looked outside the bar's single window, at the rays of light that fought their way through the dusty interior to land on the wooden planking. I could throw this away. Make my excuses if Sara came looking for me again, go back to the Guard and my comrades there that I smiled and laughed with but kept an easy distance from. Or I could pick up this thin slip of paper and follow it back there, to a place I forswore and burned my bridges to years ago. Apparently I hadn't burned them well enough. I thought back to something Erinys had said years ago, before she was taken away, before I gave up my old life and settled for my new one in the Guard.

_You're a stupid man, Elias, who's going to push his luck once too often._

I pushed the door to the city open with my shoulder as I folded the drawing away into my jerkin. The street around me thronged with people getting on with their lives and I was carried along with them like a fish in a strong current. The bed I'd started the day wanting was still there, and I could still spare a few hours for some sleep before I went and found the guildhall. When I walked up to those gates I knew that smile would be leaning up against the gates waiting for me. I doubled back through the crowd down streets that in darkness wouldn't be safe but in daylight were quick shortcuts, back to the place where I merely laid my head when I wanted oblivion.

In the afternoon I would go and see what my old home wanted.


	3. Shadow Quintet

"The grand conqueror returns."

Sara leaned up against the stonework of the archway as I walked up, one foot swinging idly and spraying passers-by with the rainwater from last night. Even as I watched a couple of them looked like they wanted to say something to the woman with the mocking smile, but the symbol embroidered on her jacket stopped them in their tracks. The Lordaeron Irregulars weren't the biggest guild, not even close, but we…but _they_ had a reputation that demanded respect. The two daggers hanging from her belt simply reinforced the point. "Afternoon Sara. Been waiting long?" I looked around but didn't see the mop-haired kid. "Your escort not about?"

She grinned. "Gave him the slip in the training grounds. Wanted to bend your ear before Bramford got to you." She turned and cocked a finger, _come hither._ "Come on, I'll take you in, in case you've forgotten your way around the old place."

I hadn't. The cobbles underfoot were still familiar and I could still remember every twist of the path to the hall. South of Old Town, the houses and bars and inns suddenly fell away to smooth empty paving, and only a few yards beyond that a stone archway that led outside the main walls, past the half-step downwards that caught so many newcomers to the guilds by surprise, and then you were on guild-owned lands. It had always been a little symbolic. That arch marked the end of Stormwind's official jurisdiction, and in the fields beyond were the dotted compounds of the guildhalls, those rich enough to afford the space near the capital. You could always tell a rookie that had gone on their first visit to the guilds by their limp.

We had a while before we came to the mini-fiefdom the Irregulars commanded. Time for some sparring. "Your message. A drawing that doesn't make any sense. What the hell Sara?"

"Inner-circle only, that's all I was told." She held out a hand and I put the piece of paper in it. Without a word she folded it again and tore it into scraps in front of my eyes. "The old man took the contract directly, no haggling, no competition. They wanted us, specifically."

"Who's 'they'?"_ Why me?_ I could see the stonework ahead, hiding between the branches of the trees. The walls were nowhere near as thick or tall as Stormwind's but they were good enough to hide the guildhall and buildings beyond, and exactly how big they were. I stopped in the grass and waited for her to look back at me. "Stop with the mystery already, what the hell is going on?"

Sara stopped and looked back, and for a second there was only the sound of the forest around us. Then she spoke. "Something big's come down from above that has Bramford and the others running scared. A job big enough to make leadership nervous as all hell. Someone high up thinks we're the best people for it and everyone's panicking trying to make goddamn sure we live up to those expectations_._"

Someone high up enough to make the old men that owned the guild worried? Worried enough to cast the net out and call me back here? I took a second and tried to make a list of people that could have those men – men who could buy and sell almost anyone else in the human city – desperate enough to bring in a burn-out like me. It was a short list, and none of the answers made me any more secure about what I was going to find inside the compound. It was ahead of us now, a rocky outer wall crawling with ivy and vines, looking shaky enough be pulled down by hand. None of that greenery reached into the stonework though. Thousands of people passed by the Irregulars compound and never gave it a second glance, which was how the guild liked it. I looked down the beaten path, and saw the old gate there. I still had time to back out if I wanted to, I lied to myself as I spoke: "Fine, lead me in."

The guards were already waiting by the gates, and one more person. They stood to either side of the man in their armour, all shining steel and solid muscle, but it was obvious who the superior officer was. Hands crossed across his chest and feet planted in the ground like he was holding the Horde itself back from his gates, Bramford was physically no larger than me or Sara, but he put out an aura that seemed to add inches to his height. Dressed in expensive leathers and a dark jacket that displayed the insignia of the Irregulars; a symbol of a hawk, its wings enfolding a sword, he loomed as we approached and his expression matched his stance. Combined with the meticulously cut-and-greased blonde hair and moustache nobody had ever seen a hair out of place in, he looked like a nobleman that had decided one day that for his next hobby he was going to play at being a soldier. Which he was. The Bramfords owned enough of the land Stormwind sat on that Riker could have spent a life getting fat and happy in his villa, watching the money steadily grow and pouring it into the family vaults. Instead he'd poured it into the Irregulars, and more than once that support had saved the organisation when lesser guilds were bought out or deemed politically unsavoury. He had fought in the councils against stricter regulations on the guilds and somehow convinced his family not to disown him to boot. He had convictions and he stuck by them, to the very end. For all that I could respect him.

He was still a total bastard though.

"Whitgens. Next time you decide to take a stroll through the countryside do it on your own time. You're a guildsman not a bloody lady-in-waiting, act like it."

"Sir," Sara replied, her face expressionless and staring straight ahead as her superior chastised her.

"At least you brought him." He turned to stare at me and I saw his eyes hadn't even changed a bit. They didn't miss anything and they found fault with everything. I felt the old irritation rise and tried to ignore it. "Conray."

"Riker," I replied, and saw him twitch at his given name. He didn't like it and I had never found out why, but two can play at being petty.

"Walk," he replied, and _spun_ on his heel to walk back past the gate into the guild's land. I could have turned away then and left, walked back to Stormwind and my post at the Guard. Away from this pompous asshole and whatever nasty surprise he had in store for me. I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and turned to see Sara there. The smile wasn't entirely back, but her lips were already creeping up. One hand held the last scrap of the paper she had torn up and I could see the small cog on it. She opened her mouth and I remembered how well she knew me.

"If you walk away now you'll always wonder."

She was right. Of course. I sighed and we stepped past the guards who had moved not an inch. As easy as that I walked out of the real world and back into the place that had already claimed so much of my old life, and now was reaching back out to grab my new one.

-xx-

"Before we go in I want to make it known I was absolutely against bringing you back."

We had walked through the guild grounds after the gate, the grass outside the walls giving way to perfectly-maintained lawns and square fields. There was already two squads on the training fields as we walked by. I recognised a couple of the trainers, and one even waved back to me. Sara talked conversationally to me as we strode up the path from the gate to the hall, and I got the impression it was mainly to annoy Bramford.

"…had _no_ idea he was even considered for promotion until it landed on him on the morning, and suddenly he was expected to actually _teach_ instead of just waving a sword around. They had his class doing drills in the mud since Lewellyn – new guy, after your time – scorched away half the grounds in a fight, I think he's _still_ on punishment duty. Leadership wanted him kicked out but the old man fought them down to just making him fix what he broke. Leadership, I forgot; we lost Silas last year when got a job in the Royal Keep, and they bumped up Kells to replace him. He's not so bad but…"

On and on, until finally Riker had sent her away back to the barracks when it looked like the man's patience would finally snap. We'd walked the rest of the way to the keep in silence. Inside the grand entryway we hadn't turned left for the stairs to the contracting room like I had thought we would, instead heading down to the cellars and basement levels. I'd never really bothered to go down there when I was a member. I hadn't really cared what the menial staff did to keep us running so long as we had a steady supply of arms and provisions. We threaded and twisted our way down through endless corridors, at more than one of which Riker had been stopped by guards and had to present identification. The crawling feeling I'd had since walking under the giant stone-etched guild emblem on the main gate had gotten stronger the further we walked, until finally Bramford had stopped in front of a simple wooden door, turned, and had made his announcement to my face.

"I have no trouble believing that, Riker," I replied.

"You're not like Whitgens or the rest of that _crew_ you used to travel with. Loose cannons I can handle."

The way he spat the word _crew_ from his mouth like it was a dirty word almost broke through the nervousness and made me want to throw my fist into his gut. I'd fought and bled a decade with that _crew_, had cheered at their weddings and carried them at their funerals. I wanted to tell him he'd never even measure up to the least of them. Instead I swallowed bile as that image still ran across my mind, and one more feeling that lay just underneath it: I still liked it here. Just being inside the old guild hall. Though it had brought me so much pain and misery, it was still home to some part of me. That's what I was so nervous about, that if I stayed too long I would be tempted to try and come back permanently. "Fine. I don't care but fine."

"This isn't some place you just walk away from, do fifteen years and leave with a pension like the Guard. Real guildsmen don't leave. They'd never have let you in if they knew you were a quitter."

"You're welcome to your opinion of me." _I cared once,_ I didn't say. An old memory. A warm, smooth hand lifting my head up out of the water. Lips pressed against mine and a pair of eyes that shined in the darkness. _You care too much, Elias._ I pushed it away and nodded past him at the door we stood at. "Looks like someone disagrees with you though."

"Enough," Riker said. "Refuse this job and you make my life easier." He pushed open the innocuous wooden door, and we both stepped through it.

-xx-

"This is him?"

The room was almost pitch-black, only a few candles dotting the room for light. What little of it there was fell onto the walls, and my gaze was drawn like a magnet to them. The stonework had been covered in posterboards, and on them hung so many papers, maps and pinned-up scribbles it was impossible to see the cork boards underneath. Tables shoved against them held more paper, held down with objects I'd never seen before and couldn't imagine the purpose of in the dim half-light. I ripped my eyes away though as I saw the table in the middle of the room.

Someone had clearly brought it in from elsewhere in the guildhall, but it was the chairs around it that drew my attention. Six wooden thrones with a high back that swept upward and curved in like the hood of a cloak, and the light cast on the walls behind them created black shadows that hid their contents. They sat around the circular table and all I could make of the people I had been brought before was vague body outlines, and nothing else. I'd seen a setup like this once before, and my hand twitched towards my empty belt for a sword I hadn't brought. I glanced sideways at Riker, but the nobleman-soldier was already walking towards the table and the figures sat around it. When he got there, he bowed, something I'd seen him do maybe three times in all my life. The list in my head of the people that could have called this meeting got smaller.

"This is the one sir." No argument, no aside-whisper of my untrustworthiness. Whoever was sitting at that table had authority.

One of the shadows talked. A deep voice that was amplified into a low rumble from the depths of the shadowed chair. "Mr Conray. Please sit." A hand gloved in dark velvet came out of the darkness and gestured towards the seventh and final seat; a simple chair that they could have taken from the mess-hall. I realised I'd be looking at people whom I couldn't see but who could see me just fine. I drew up to the table and looked across it at the figures before me. I couldn't see any faces but I knew they were staring back.

"You're then expert we were promised then?" another voice sounded from the shadows with a bite. A woman, and familiar.

"I've not been told anything about this promise, but it looks like that's the case," I said. The chairs whispered to each other for a second and I felt like a fool, sitting there in semi-darkness facing people I couldn't see. Behind me I could hear Bramford shuffling his feet on the floor. I glanced down at the table and my finger stopped mid-air as I saw the map engraved onto the wood. All three continents were there, etched onto the surface with amazing detail. I didn't let myself get caught up in it though, and looked back up at the mystery council. "What can I do for you?"

The whispering stopped, and the first voice to address me spoke again. "We're a group of concerned individuals, Mr Conray."

"Concerned about what?" If they were going to play mystery-games they weren't going to get anywhere. "Just hire a guild if you have a problem, like the rest of the noblemen."

"We have. _This_ guild," a voice said. It wasn't the first one. It was small and tinny and spoke just a little too fast. A gnome. "But we're making a special team and we were told you would be the guy to put on it."

"Why the smoke and mirrors?" I asked.

"We wish to know your loyalty before we lay our hearts bare." Another voice and I knew they were testing me now. It was the woman from before and now as she spoke more I could hear it in her voice, the slight blurring of certain words and an accent not found in any human town. I knew that voice and the worry in me grew just a little bit. If she was on this council this was no small job, just like Sara had said.

The crack about loyalty annoyed me. I'd heard enough half-jokes about it when I left the guild for the first time. "My loyalty to who?" I asked testily. "I'm just a guardsmen now, no matter what you've been told. What am I _doing_ here?"

"You were more than a guardsman once." I couldn't place that accent, from another of the shadowy throne. "Or have we been…misinformed…of your qualifications?" The voice oozed smugness and I disliked it instantly. "Just another average human in a city full of them?" I _really_ disliked it.

My mind thought fast and brought connections together as I talked. The owners of the building we were in: "If you've come to the Irregulars specifically you know their best work; espionage, skirmishing, small-force work." Sought me out specifically: "You wanted me too, so that means you've talked to my old commanders, you know I'm loyal, you know I'm good." Bramford's obsequiousness: "You're either noblemen or equivalent rank and you want something done quietly." The voices; human, gnome, night-elf, and two more. One unheard, and the voice that had mocked me. Either way more races than human were here. "This isn't just a Stormwind operation." I looked directly at the voice that had mocked me. "How am I doing so far?"

"Then bring it altogether and tell us what we are all doing here," said the figure in the fifth chair. Deep and booming and not human at all: A Draeni. I was right. I took a deep breath, and leapt. My skin tingled as I talked.

"This is an Alliance operation. An operation important enough for you to throw around money and influence to bring in whoever you want, and dangerous enough for you to hire the best combat guild in the Eastern Kingdoms to carry it out. How much are you paying the Irregulars?"

It was the night-elf woman who responded. "Five hundred a day. Fifty thousand on completion. Ten thousand in the Lost Pot." She sounded bored as she rattled off the numbers, amounts of gold a normal person would never see in their lives. She hadn't changed much, if she could throw out those sums so easily.

"You're hunting something, something bad," I said. It was obvious now.

"Explain," the Draenic voice demanded.

"Ten thousand for the Lost Pot?" I could have spat. "You expect people to die. You expect a _lot_ of people to die, if you need an incentive like that to get people to sign up." Ten thousand gold to the family of the deceased would make even a veteran guildsman consider signing up for a job he knew was stupid and dangerous. "And it's secret. That's why you dragged me out here. You want us to go hunt something and you don't want anyone to know about it." _And nobody does it better than the Irregulars._ I could still feel a little pride in that, at least. We didn't have the manpower to deploy divisions or lay sieges, but the Irregulars were the best skirmishers in Stormwind. Maybe in the whole of the Eastern Kingdoms. "You brought me here because you wanted someone to lead a hunting party, and I was the best the guild ever had."

I raised that last point like a challenge, and it lay in the air for long seconds before the human male who had first spoken picked up the gauntlet. "Then will you accept the position?"

"Why should I?" I shot back.

"Patriotism," the mocking almost-human voice across from me called out. "For love of your alliance and your kingdom."

I'd nearly died for patriotism once. Never again. "Try harder."

"Security," the night-elf said. "Security for the rest of your life." She put a hand on the table and I could see the golden rings standing out against pale purple flesh, unlined by scars or wrinkles of age. "Money enough for a family, a house somewhere outside of that gutter in Old Town."

"A title. Maybe. If you succeed," the man said.

They wanted me _desperately_ if they were willing to make me a nobleman. But that wasn't what I wanted. It appeared like a flash in my head as they dangled their offers in front of me and in that second I knew I'd do it. Would hunt down whatever was out there. But I couldn't just ask for my reward outright or they'd refuse. So…

"If I succeed I choose my own reward." I raised a hand to wave off the barrage of insults or disagreements that would follow. "I'll be reasonable. Mr Bramford will tell you how reasonable I am." Let the bastard stew on that. Riker may have detested me but he was honest.

"He is," I heard Riker behind me grunt out like a tooth had been pulled, and I smiled.

There was silence as they thought about it, and I took the chance to look around again. The maps that covered the walls of the room looked like they were decorated for Wintersveil, strips of red and blue ribbons linking the small fiefdoms that made up the Eastern Kingdoms and the borders and boundaries that marked Kalimdor. Where the strips reached the edge of a map it would run sideways to a new map, and continue on. They were enough to form a spider's web that covered the world. Whatever they were looking for was _moving. _I was so engrossed in looking at the diagrams and maps I almost missed the Draeni speaking:

"Acceptable," the deep voice rumbled out.

"Agreed," the gnome and night elf said, the latter sounding bored enough to be half-asleep. I ignored her.

"So it is done. Let's all hope Mr Conray is as reasonable about his reward as Mr Bramford says he is, assuming he succeeds," the human male said. "You signed the Secrecy Oath back when you were a member of this guild the first time, didn't you?"

"Yes." I knew what was coming next.

"Well we'll ask you to do it again later anyway, but for now…" When the man spoke again it wasn't a nobleman's half-bored drawl but the sharp voice of command. "In my authority and position as a member of the Royal intelligence service SI:7 I swear you to silence, service and secrecy."

"Yes, yes, that's all good and proper I think. Now can we please get rid of all this bother with the lights and shadows and suchlike?" the small voice of the gnome asked.

"Certainly," the smooth voice across from me spoke, and reached out. A hand came out of a crimson robe and clicked its fingers. Light blazed across the room and suddenly where there had been black shadows and dark corners there was clear stone walls and people sat around the table with me, as the candles around the room lit up like tiny suns and I saw who I had been talking with.

A man with no distinguishing features I could identify dressed in the regalia of a nobleman, only the small bronze dagger-and-cloak clasp on his jacket marking him as a member of the human's intelligence division.

A red-haired gnome sat on books piled on his chair and looked at me like an amusing lab specimen or curiosity, twirling his small moustache in his fingers.

A pale-skinned and deep blue-haired Night Elf woman that gazed at me with barely-disguised contempt, whom I recognised far too well.

The bulk of the Draeni as he sat there, the light on his dark blue skin making him almost luminous, head-tentacles falling across his white robes like a dwarf's beard.

And the final figure, the source of the voice that had sounded so amused throughout the whole process, sitting across from me in scarlet robes trimmed with gold. Green eyes that pulsed with unearthly light, and a smile like a shark staring down at its helpless meal. A member of a race that I would have never thought to see anywhere close to the Alliance capital, let alone sat around a table with its members.

_No fucking way._

"On with the show," the Blood Elf said.

* * *

-xx-

Welcome to the story, my first long-form one in the Warcraft fandom and a re-imagining of the best raid storyline that Blizzard ever did; Ulduar. I know the usual trap in MMO fiction is to set your WoW dudes as the protagonists, but I think I've managed to avoid that gulf and craft some original characters you'll enjoy watching.

Updates will be slightly erratic due to the other story I'm currently writing in the FFVIII section (go check it out if you like!) but I'll be aiming for something approaching weekly, and bi-weekly at the very most. As usual I apologise in advance for any spelling or grammar errors you spot. If anyone would like to offer services as a proof-reader I would be grateful, although all I can ofer in return is early-access to the chapters and my profuse thanks.

Hope you enjoy reading as I enjoy writing!

~Cobray


	4. The Shape of the Dark

_It is a machine that looks like a man._

I sat and listened to the person sitting opposite me as he talked. As he did so he gestured to himself, around the room, to the other people sat around the table like he was addressing some outdoor gathering of hundreds and not a handful of people in an underground basement. The blood elf talked – _a blood elf in the heart of an Alliance guild are they fucking insane? –_ and images and words cascaded across the table as he used magic to show us what he meant. Shapes hovered in the air above us like mirages, waving gently in the candlelight. It was like looking through a murky window, showing a single room that looked like it had been through an earthquake.

"We found the first inside our own city when it attacked me in my chambers," he said. "It had disguised itself as one of my kind and nobody had been the wiser until it struck. When it was finally dispatched and…examined…what we found was took our breath away, as the human saying goes."

The maps and glyphs faded away as the elf finished his incantation, and above us floated a hand. It could have been the image in Sara's note taken to a real artist and sculpted: The pink and fleshy skin had been peeled away and inside there was dark yellow and grey metal. As I watched a finger entered the illusion to poke at a thin rod of bronze, and the dead hand's middle finger twitched in response. The scene pulled out, more and more details being filled in as it did so, and instead of just a hand I was looking at the upper torso of something that could have been human, except where it was wounded it showed metal and wheels instead of blood and muscle. Everywhere on the chest patches of skin had been pulled away and pinned back to show insides filled with machinery I didn't recognise and couldn't understand. Some of it glowed with pulsing light, other parts were twisted and warped like they had been exposed to a hellish heat. It could have been some kind of complex gnomish prank, but for the gathering of nobles and spies around me that said this wasn't a bored engineer's grisly toy. _This is real._

I didn't realise I had spoken until the SI:7 man replied: "It's as real as you or I, Mr Conray. This gathering isn't just to look at some curiosity brought in by the other side, there are more of these things and every bit as dangerous as the first. Things that look like us but hide this inside them." On the illusion the flesh of the hand was pulled away, revealing long sharp knives inside it.

"What happened?" I asked, already trying to hold in my head what a person could do if it was made of metal instead of flesh. _Strong. Fast. Wouldn't get tired. Would a metal man have emotions? Pity? Would it be controlled like a toy or would someone need to give it orders? How much of it would you need to take apart before it stopped working? Wouldn't feel pain either. How fast would it think?_ I slipped back into my old habits like I had left the guild only yesterday. The fragments of thought came together and spelled out one thing to me: _Deadly and hard to kill._

The Blood Elf talked on. "It made its way into the Silvermoon Academia, disguising itself as a student from our Orgrimmar chapter with information about an Alliance spy in the city. When the guards had left and my back was turned it assaulted me. If I wasn't a superbly-trained mage I doubt I would have survived. As it was…" He shrugged. "I had students close at hand. It took seven of us working together to bring it down. Of course my first thought was to report it to my superiors. My second was to come to my other half in your Alliance." He nodded a head at the SI:7 officer sat alongside me, who didn't respond back. No love lost there, at least. Wait…

"You think this was _us?_" I asked.

"No," the elf replied. "Neither of our…factions…are capable of craftsmanship such as this, or making something that can _act_ so lifelike. Our goblin-craftsmen tend towards the loud and bombastic for their constructs, brute-strength and suchlike. Your mountain-dweller comrades are not known for their small-scale work either."

"Not _yet_," the gnome said under his breath, and I got the impression only I had heard him.

That reminded me of something though. "Why _aren't_ the dwarves here?" The seat I had expected the final Alliance member-race to take was instead occupied by the Blood Elf, and the man made me nervous. It was the eyes; a solid green with a darker emerald core where the pupils should have been. An experienced soldier can see another man's intentions and emotions in his eyes, but against elves you can't do shit. He sat across from me grinning slightly as he spoke and used his magic like a light-show, and the entire thing gave me the impression of a predator that hadn't quite decided to eat the prey in front of him. Dwarves had never trusted elves, of any kind, ever. I wondered if their people not being here was more than just a lack of extra seating. I glanced sideways at the only other human at the table with me, and the SI:7 agent shuffled on his seat as he replied.

"The king-under-the-mountain is too occupied with domestic important matters to concern himself with this," the man said quickly. I could smell the bullshit coming from the excuse, but kept quiet as he turned back to the maps on the walls, the trail that crossed the world. "This is the quarry you'll be hunting Mr Conray. It is fast, it is strong, it fits into our cities like a glove and until recently we had no idea they existed or how to track them at all." He pushed his chair back and stood, and everyone looked up at him through the haze of magic above the table. "We're here because your guild is the best and you were known as one of its premier alumni. Because there is a new player in our game and we need to know who they are and where they come from, else we might find ourselves waking up one day and be surrounded by these constructions." He swept a hand at the magical pictures floating above. Pieces of a corpse that had been stripped away and then peeled apart to reveal knives and sharp edges and tubes that could have been rifle barrels. It looked like whatever the thing had been it had an arsenal inside it.

I looked at the maps on the wall, bright ribbons criss-crossing the country. Something about them was…_wait._ "There're three lines here." I stood and went over to the wall. Up closer and in the bright light it was obvious. The ribbons came close and sometimes met, but always stayed distinct, three separate paths carved across the world. Looks like they'd already made some progress. One began north, in the small island-chain that the Draeni called their home. It ran south across the ocean to the mainland, and ended in Night Elf-controlled lands, just before it would hit the Barrens and the Orcs that lived there.

"That one was discovered and ran shortly after our newfound friend alerted us to their existence," the Draeni said in his heavy accent, and a touch of amusement. A huge finger pointed at the line I was looking at that started in his homeland. "Once we knew of it, it was not so hard to track down. It had some trouble duplicating my people's unique…attributes." A hand ran through the Draeni's thin blue tentacles that hung from his chin and jowls where a beard would have been on a human or dwarf. "It fled south to beyond Ashenvale, where it was lost on the edges of the Barrens. Maybe to meet up with his master or controller, maybe just to hide. Maybe it took itself apart and sits in pieces at the bottom of a river." He shrugged his massive shoulders, a gesture he had to have learned from being around humans. "I do not think we are so lucky, however."

I looked at the map of the Eastern Kingdoms and saw the second red line that started at Silvermoon City and ended south in the Ghostslands, only a few hundred miles from its starting-point. "This is the one you killed?"

"The one that tried to kill me first, yes," the blood elf said. I wasn't watching him as he said it. I was watching the Si:7 man, and saw him twitch, just a little, as the words came from the Horde agent's mouth. Just one more thing to ask later, when this farce was over and the real work could start. "It gave us a chase but in the end we were the victors."

The third one then. It didn't start or go through Silvermoon, but deep inside Lordaeron, the old human capital and now one of the Horde's main cities, controlled by the free-Undead. The path it took was twisted, sometimes headed east or west instead of directly south. It took a second, but eventually I realised the random path wasn't quite so random. It wandered through Silverpine and Hillsbrad, the Wetlands and Lock Modan, all areas with heavy forests as it headed south. "Is this it?"

"Everything we have is in this room," the intelligence man replied, waving a hand around the place and the stacks of papers. "This will be the only time this group assembles, until you find out what we need." The man stood away from the table, towards the other exit of the room. "If you will come with me, we can begin to see to your needs while my fellow conspirators excuse themselves. Then you can begin."

"Some of us have a long road to travel," the female night elf said. At no point during the meeting had she so much as looked at me. I knew why, and I couldn't blame her. Just being in the same room as her made me feel twitchy, and it couldn't have been pleasant for her either. I could hear the venom in her voice and I knew the others had heard it to, but they pretended not to notice, except the SI:7 man who couldn't resist glancing between us.

"A good journey to you all," the Draeni said as he stood, looking around the room and finally at me. "And good luck on your chase my friend. Should your hunt take you north to us it would be a pleasure to speak in less awkward circumstances."

"And to you, sir," I said, and meant it. I'd never met a Draeni yet I didn't like, and this one didn't break the chain.

"See you soon," the gnome said.

The Blood Elf stayed silent as he stood, and the last look I had at him before the door shut between us was those green eyes staring at me, and the edges of his mouth twitching upwards.

Even as I hoped I'd never see the Horde agent again, somehow I doubted that would be the case.

* * *

"Thank the Light _that's_ over."

If the room we had just left was a conspiracy nut's dream, the one we came into next couldn't have been more different, nor could the change the man underwent when the door closed behind us and we were alone. It was an old storehouse somehow had made an effort to transform into something approaching a study. Stone walls had been covered up with pretty if meaningless tapestries and old dusty furniture had been dragged in from the barracks upstairs to replace the storage barrels and lockers. The light was good though and the long upholstered seats were comfortable, which was all I needed after the eye-straining dimness of the gathering we had left, and the hard wooden stool I'd been sitting in. The man sprawled down onto a chair opposite me, wrinkling the nobleman's outfit that had in the flickering candlelight of the meeting-room looked imposing and luxurious but now in a good light looked wrinkled and ill-fitting, like they had been meant for a person two sizes bigger and he was just borrowing them. He looked exhausted. Now that I could actually see him I took another look at the intelligence man. A clutch of brown hair in a short haircut that could be pat down into a military shave or swept back a nobleman's coiffure, a thin build that in baggy clothes hid anything from an athlete's build to a lazy shopseller's bulk. Everything about his appearance looked like it could be something else with the right care. He was a spy alright.

"Long day?" I asked.

It seemed to be the right question. "Long week. I'm sorry about all that darkroom crap, it was all we could throw together quickly that would make everyone happy." He sounded tired. "It's been a hell of a mess since that smug elvish asshole arrived in the city, we're still playing catch-up on this whole situation." The man reached upwards and even though he looked half-ready to fall asleep right in his chair the handshake was just as firm as mine. "Aaron Vickers, SI:7."

"Elias Conray, Stormwind Guard. So what's really going on here sir?" I asked.

"You don't have to call me sir. Stormwind Intel is civilian, not military, and so are Guardsmen. Let's stick to last names until we know each other better. I'm your liaison with the city until this whole mess is over by the way, so that might not take long."

That suited me fine; I'd never cared much for rank. "Sure."

"As for what's really going on you heard most of it already. The no-bullshit version of it is this: A week or so ago the Silvermoon Academia – their version of our Stormwind Mage Organisation basically – got in contact with our Archmage and said they had something they wanted to show us. The smug bastard from back in there came across a few days later, under cover of dark so to speak. The Archmage took one look at the Blood Elf's little 'present' and brought it straight to the Royal Keep. From there we got our hands on it."

"Machine-people."

Vickers nodded. "We want them, whatever they are. We want to take them apart and find out what makes them tick and make more of them. Outside of all the sweetness and nicety you saw in that room we want them _badly_. Imagine an army of them on the borders. We'd never have to give a damn about Orc raiders again, that's for sure. That's why the dwarf representative wasn't here by the way, he took one look at the scribbles that the blood elf brought and if his forgeworkers have spent a second outside their workshops since I'll be surprised. You can bet Ironforge will have some information on these things for you by the time you're ready to start your hunt. Speaking of which, the sooner the better."

"This is a race," I said, and it wasn't a question. It had been there inside that candlelit room, lurking under all the diplomatic words and look-at-us-aren't-we-getting-along rhetoric. The breathed words of the gnome and the barely-restrained anger of the Night Elf at having to sit next to one of her corrupt half-kin. These days we solved our problems with diplomats and occasional border disputes instead of looted cities and burned forests, but underneath everything else the Horde and Alliance were still enemies.

"That elf they sent wasn't some random nobody. Taelan Lightweave is their version of a battle-mage, one of their best, as good as anyone I know of in the guilds or the Crown's forces. I don't know why he's acting the messenger but I don't trust the smug pointy-eared ass. I have no doubt he's already planning to get in your way."

"That's your job, Conray. Get to these walking armouries and bring them back to us. Intact if you can, in pieces if you have to. But either way get them here, and make sure if you can't they don't end up on an operating table in the Undercity."

I nodded and asked the question that had hovering over me all day, from the moment Sara had delivered her message in a smoky Old Town bar to the moment the doors closed behind me on this spy and his shadowy cabal. "So why me, Vickers? A dozen people alone in the Irregulars are good enough for this. Shit, a couple of them could probably find blood in a stone if you asked them to. So why pull me in?"

Vickers leaned back in his sear. When I stared at me it was like someone looking through my eyeballs at the brain behind them. He had a hell of a stare. "Because you have unique skills. You've dealt with unknown factors before and came out on top. Because you've met the 'enemy' in the Horde and you know they're not just slavering orcs and bull-men and zombies, in fact they're just as smart and ruthless as us, and you're not going to underestimate them like so many wide-eyed recruits would. Because you were good enough that you went north and came back."

I shuddered at the word, just a little bit. It brought back too many bad feelings. A chill deep inside I'd had locked away and yet sometimes still escaped its prison and made me shiver. "That was a long time ago."

Vickers gestured at one of the tapestries on the walls. It was another map of the world, done in the old style of embroidery instead of paper-and-ink, green thread making up the continents on a rich blue cloth. The Eastern Kingdoms of mankind were divided up; the human lands in the southern half and the Undead cities in the north, every fiefdom with the name of its ruler and their heraldry sewn in with perfect precision. To the west across the great sea, Kalimdor was clear of borders but no less ornate. Trees sown onto the cloth with emerald thread that shined where the Night Elves made their home and orange ropes outlining the Orcs homeland on the eastern coasts.

Then above them both, the final landmass that sat above the Kingdoms and Kalimdor like a crescent-shaped moon, its tips pointing down at the other two continents. This one had no decoration adorning it, no detail. Just endless white inside the borders, and one name sewn into the centre in heavy black thread:

_NORTHREND_

Just reading the name sent fresh discomfort through old scars. "A lot of people went north and came back." And so many more didn't. I could still see their names and faces if I thought back hard enough. Not that I wanted to. Some of those old ghosts still wandered the snows up there; I didn't want them in my head as well. I had told Sildri when I left the Irregulars;_ I don't want to remember anymore._ She hadn't liked it or wanted it, but she had loved me then and she'd done her best and now that pain was safely away where it couldn't claw at my brain and heart. Now the feelings I had of that wasteland were only mild apprehension and bad dreams, instead of shivering fits and screaming nightmares.

"I read those reports you sent in to us from the field, and from inside the citadel, and the others written by the de-briefers. You had more reason than anyone to hate us for what we made you do, Mr Conray," Vickers said as I stared at the map. "You knew enough to ruin us. You could have thrown the whole mess in our faces if you wanted and you didn't. Embarrassed a whole lot of important people and you didn't. The nobles may have wanted to sweep it all away, especially after the debacle with Heartfield, but some of us never forgot what you did for us."

"I wanted to be forgotten," I said quickly, but wondered how true it was. I tried to shake that thought out of my head but it stayed there, clinging on. I tore my eyes away from the blank white space of that gods-forsaken continent and looked at the spy.

"We want to put things right Conray. Catch these machine-men and their makers for us and this is our chance to make up for everything we piled up on you a decade ago."

I've never liked spies. It's an honour thing I guess. I've always thought some of the old hands in the guilds and the Guards put too much stock in honour. They'll risk their own necks and the necks of their men just to uphold some ideal vision of themselves, and too often the result of 'honour' is two men in shining armour patting themselves on the back while around them their soldiers bleed and suffer. But it still has its place, and spies slide around honour like thieves avoiding a night watchman. When you call them on it they make their excuses; 'for the good of the realm' and all that garbage, like it's their right to trample over normal people and the laws to get their target. Now here I was sitting across from one, someone who looked only a year or two younger than me saying things I'd never heard spies say before. I don't like spies, but against all my years of experience I liked Aaron Vickers. "I'll need a few things," I said.

He leaned forward again and the quill and paper was in his hands like he'd been expecting it all along. Probably had been. I wondered how many other people like me he'd had in basements like this, wheedling into doing whatever task SI:7 needed them to. "Name them," he said.

I told myself they were my final excuses, my last excuse to walk away if things looked too sketchy or suspicious. I don't think I was fooling myself, and I certainly wasn't fooling him. "Equipment."

"You'll get what you ask for, within reason. Masterwork certainly, Tiered if we can wrangle it away from the other guilds."

Good luck with that. Guilds fought tooth and nail to find enough materials to make a single set of armour good enough to be called Tiered, and the smiths capable of forging it had backlogs years long. Masterwork would do in a pinch though, anything would be better than the thin steel garbage I'd been using for my last decade in the Stormwind Guard. "If you're going to try and buy Tiered from the guilds make sure you bring gold," I said. One down, two to go. "Support."

"Available," Vickers said smoothly. "The Alliance will have squads standing by if you need them. As scouts or just warm bodies, whatever you need them for we'll approve it."

That was alright but too vague. "Only squads? Squads of what?" I didn't want to end up with twenty-plus useless militia following me, farmers with swords and guns in their hands that would get in the way of the real soldiers, or worse still end up shooting us in a confused moment. Guildsmen hated militia.

Vickers shrugged. "Regular guardsmen, from the city regiments. You'll probably get a platoon if you ask nicely. Don't use them for anything unreasonable. You're not invading Orgrimmar."

"Good enough." I had no excuses now. I was going to do it and both of us knew it. I threw out my final demand, and even as I did so I knew there would be no problem. I was suckered in and I hadn't even bothered to put up a decent fight. "I pick my own team."

"Done, whoever you want. If they have contracts already we'll arrange the paperwork you need. Nobody will complain," Vickers said, tapping his quill against the desk.

I had a list in my mind already, had been making it ever since I'd known what it was I was tracking down. I sincerely doubted his promise of no complaints would stick, especially once I gave him the list, but I kept that to myself. Leave it to the last second before I dropped _that_ on him. I stood and he did the same. I reached out my hand and we shook on it. He had a strong grip, not a clerk's at all. "You have me," I said. "Give me a couple of days to sort my life out and I'll be ready to start." More like sort my life _away_. I thought about the people I'd be leaving behind, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to feel as sad as I should have been. "I'll see you soon Vickers."

"See you soon Elias," he replied using my first name, and I didn't feel the need to correct him. I walked out of the hidden study, out past the rows of maps and reports on the table that the Alliance and their shadowy ally had gathered around, and knew I'd be back soon enough. On the way out it felt like every stone in the hall was speaking as I passed, and they all said the same thing.

_Welcome back._


	5. Words and Scrolls

"You have to let me in on it."

"In on what?"

"On whatever you and Bramford are up to."

"We're not up to anything."

"You ungrateful bastard. After everything I've done for you."

I hid a grin as we walked under the stone archway and back into the city's jurisdiction. I knew I was imagining it but it felt like someone watching me had suddenly turned away as I left the guilds behind me and fell back into the city, where I was Guardsman Conway and nobody else. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come _on_ Elias. I'm losing my mind. I need a contract. With competent people, not the new blood they keep saddling me with to try and teach them which end of a blade to grab. Take me away from all this."

I'd left the meeting room light-headed and the sky had already been dark. All my fatigue hit me at once and as I walked the winding route back to my home Sara was all that was keeping me awake. My mind was trying to wrap itself around everything that had been said in those dark rooms, but full comprehension kept slipping away whenever I began to get a handle on what it was I had agreed to do. "Ask me again tomorrow."

She skipped ahead of me and turned back as I reached the plain wooden door to my lodgings, the smile if not gone from her face then at least suppressed. "I'm seriously Elly, give me a shot at least."

Gods and the Light I needed sleep. "Promise. But let me think this through, alright."

The grin returned and as she stepped back around me she planted a kiss on my cheek. "You're the best old man. See you 'round."

She disappeared into the maze of Old Town's streets as I closed the door behind her. I was still trying to get to grips with my new problem when I sat down on the bed, but I was out before a single idea emerged.

* * *

_The cheap and peeling walls of my home fall away, smooth stonework and tapestry of the guild underneath them and I'm in my old residence of the Irregular's guildhall. Sara and Bramford and the others stand around me and shadows creep in the dark behind them. I try to ask what's going on why are you here but when I open my mouth I feel pain and taste blood. I gag as something crawls in the back of my throat and suddenly I'm reeling as long thin steel whips stab out and tear my old comrades apart, blood and oil and crackling blue lightning ripping them apart from inside._

_I try and run but every door leads back into the same room, and there's nothing else there. The bodies gone and replaced by a box on the ground, bound wood and steel. It's cold. Icicles and snow dance around it, and I to reach out but my hand grows numb as I touch the handles on top. I try to break free but instead my flesh cracks and breaks and the box stays where it is, my hand still wrapped around it and my arm a stump._

_I feel cold._

* * *

I looked at the young man as he stood in front of my door, the single stair I was on giving me a convenient extra few inches to look down on him from. I knew why he was here but that didn't make me feel any better about it. "What's your name?" I resist the urge to call him 'kid'.

"Corporal Lenswick sir. The guildmaster assigned me to be your bodyman for the contract."

Which meant he was here to keep watch over me until I got the job done or died trying. I'd done the job enough times when I was a rookie decades ago, seemed like some things never change. I considered sending him away for a second but an extra pair of hands wasn't something I could afford to refuse. He could carry things if nothing else. "Alright, give me five minutes." Then I shut the door in his face.

When I opened it again it was something close to presentable, and the corporal wasn't the only person standing outside. "Morning Sara."

"Off to work?" she asked, looking me up and down.

I'd thought it over while making myself as presentable as I could. "Just some loose ends to tidy up," I said, and she nodded as I stepped out of the tiny abode and we walked down the street. The boy followed behind us both by a few paces, and I finally realised where I'd seen him before. Gods I _had_ been tired when she had buttonholed me in that cheap bar. "Your understudy?"

She nodded. "Bramford's idea." There was just a touch more venom in her voice when she spoke the name outside the guild's jurisdiction. Just a little. "I'm to instruct and imprint the knowledge of the past onto the minds of the future."

"My god, did he really say that?" I knew some guilds ran an understudy program but the Irregulars had never been one of them when I was a member. Some things _do_ change.

Sara shrugged. "It's a little annoying but I'm over it," she said, lying through her teeth, and she knew I'd know. "Mainly it's about just doing what you do and letting them watch and ask questions." She looked up as I stopped walking. "Ah. Those kind of loose ends."

I knocked on the door to the Guard barrack. "Won't take me that long," I said. I owed them this much.

* * *

I sat in the chair facing the dwarf's desk and tried not to squirm as he stared at me with those gimlet eyes.

"Well, I'll be sorry to lose you lad. You did a damn fine job, while we had you."

I owed him. A lot. He'd given me a job when almost everyone else had turned me away after…after what had happened. It hadn't been much; enough money for my hole in Old Town and to live on, but it was more than nothing, and I hated to spring it on him like this. But my mind was made up. "I'm sorry but there's something that's come up, and I just can't stay." It was weak, beyond weak, but it was the only excuse I had.

"This have anything to do with the lass from the other night?" Brorn asked, puffing on his pipe. The smell of the dank tobacco permeated his office and made everyone who entered want to cough and open a window, but no-one had ever dared complain about it.

There was no reason to lie, about this at least. "Yeah, it does."

"A better job? Because we'd fight to keep you, if…" he trailed off as I shook my head.

"It's a job but not like you think." And he could never beat what they had offered me.

Brorn leaned back, the old oaken chair creaking. He'd decorated his office like a dwarf. The single window that looked out over the city shone a dull light inside but candles took care of the rest, throwing warm yellow light against the dusty tomes he had stacked the bookshelf with and the old wooden furniture he'd brought. Being called into the man's office was like being called into your father's study after breaking something old and valuable. "Let me take a guess then lad, if you're uprooting yourself. No harm in guessing." Eyes that had seen centuries pass by them stared across the wood at me. "I looked you up when you joined the guard you know. That was some bad business."

He had no clue how bad. "Sure."

"Is your old life calling you back, Sergeant Conray?" Brorn asked, and as he asked it those old eyes were like beams staring into my mind.

"Dragging me back," I said, and cursed myself for saying more than I had meant to.

He shrugged and stood up from his chair. "Aye, then I reckon I couldn't keep you anyway." He walked around the huge desk and held a hand upwards. "You ever feel the stones coming down on your head laddie, you come calling for me. Us dwarves are good at digging things out."

I smiled as I shook his hand. My hands had spent two decades wielding swords, being battered by the enemy and torn up by fighting, but in that ancient and gnarled grip my skin must have felt like cloth. "I'll do that. And thanks. But…"

"But there's something else you want , I wager?" The dwarf asked me with a smile.

"But can I get that help now instead of later?"

* * *

I walked out of my ex-commanding officer's rooms and down the stone stairs with a heart feeling a pound lighter. I clutched the small piece of parchment he had written me tightly as I went off in search of the other reason I had come back to the Guard barracks. I was about to turn and head directly across to the Records room when I spotted another familiar face, leaning forward and talking earnestly to…I sighed and walked over to the pair, and caught the tail-end of the man's conversation.

"…place up past Redridge, you should really see it in the autumn. I only really use it for-"

"He's happily married and trying to con you into getting him a job in the guild. Give it up Silas, we have places to go and she's coming with me." I grabbed Sara's hand and dragged her away as my old Guard partner stared after us, speech still winding down like a record stopped mid-play.

"He seemed nice."

"He's been giving that spiel to every guildsman that comes through here since I joined," I said as we rounded the corner. "Didn't I ask you to wait outside?"

"No, you didn't," Sara said with a smile that radiated innocence, "and would I have listened if you had?"

No, godsdamnit, she wouldn't have. "That'll get you killed one day." Stone corridors led to more stone corridors as we walked through the Guard headquarters inside the walls of Stormwind, until finally a turn led from a turn and finally to a door even older than mine. The bronze plaque _RECORDS_ gleamed from polish as I pushed the door open and Sarah followed me into the Stormwind Guard's recordkeeping centre.

The woman on the desk displayed no obvious emotion as she looked up, quill still in mid-scratch as the other hand brushed hair out of her eyes. "Elias. What can I do for you?" Her vision flicked sideways to Sara, but her expression didn't change at all. For as long as I had worked with her Felswick had shown no particular passion for her job. She simply came in and got it done. I wondered how someone with no interest in her position could be so good at it. She ran Records like a machine.

"A little strange, but a request for information" I said as I handed over the small piece of paper Brorn had scribbled on. I'd wondered on the way here if the dwarf thought enough of me to do it, but evidently he'd had more respect for me than I thought, because Felswick took one look at it and just nodded.

"_Anyone_ we have on file?" She looked back up at me with suspicious, more emotion than I'd ever seen her show before. "Who in particular are you looking for?"

"First name; Aaron Vickers. You'll want to look under the Intelligence section for that one." I heard a scuffle of leather against stone and looked sideways to see Sara's hand slipping from the raised desk. I ignored it, for now. "I'd like to know what he's been involved in."

"SI:7 records are sealed Elias, you know that," she replied. "But I'll see what I can do. Next?"

"Kirei Ulane'sol." The night-elf at the table, eyes that gleamed with a cold hard light at me. A surname I thought I had left far behind half a decade ago, for better _and_ worse. I had no love for her, and she detested me. I wanted to know if there was some hidden reason she had agreed to my being called for this mission. "Anything you have in the last five years."

"And the last?" Felswick asked.

"Taelan Lightweave." I saw her eyebrows crease and cut her off before she could speak. "Not one of ours. A Blood Elf."

I could almost feel Sara's smile crawling on my back, but I kept looking at Felswick as the frown became deeper. "We don't keep information on Horde soldiers-"

"But you keep them on visiting dignitaries," I said quickly, and hoped she didn't just turn up me down straight up. For a second she just stared at me silently, and then the gods must have looked down and taken pity on me because she turned without another word and headed into the endless stacks of paper and parchment that made up the archives of Stormwind.

"Your little secret isn't screwing around," Sara said as she leaned against the wooden desk, tipping her head at me. "Those names I know."

"Spill it," I said.

"And in return?" she purred.

I sighed. "You're in. Clear it with Bramford and prepare for a long trip."

She smiled and brought up two fingers, tapping the first. "Vickers I know of, mess-hall rumour but solid enough. He's Stormwind Intelligence and for once they got the Intelligence part right. Irregulars have done some work for him and he's done right by us both times. No crap like the Crown usually throws at us about pay or 'extra duties'. If he's in on this you're _after_ something." She was right but that I could explain later. She tapped the second finger and her grin extended. "The elf I can do one better. I've met him before."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Lightweave's a name the guilds know but I'm not surprised you don't. Remember the hoopla around Tempest Keep? Outland, about five or so years back?"

"Yeah." It had been in some of the papers, but Outland was a million miles from me in the Stormwind Guard, in more ways than one. I had put it down to elves killing elves and then turned away from it back to reports of robbery and assault.

"His daughter was in the final squads that assaulted the Eye. Aesha Lightweave, a mage just like her dad. She didn't make it home."

"Harsh." I couldn't imagine losing a daughter like that and I didn't care to. "How did he take it?"

Sara shrugged. "As well as you'd think. Couple of years back I swung north once into the Ghostlands to suppress some Troll cultists before they ended up calling down something nasty. Turned out the Horde were just as worried and had a team there too. We bumped into each other on the way and acted like adults about the whole thing for a change. They won the toss to go in and we went home. He's _dedicated _to the cause, that one."

That could spell trouble. Any elf on a Horde raiding team would have to be able to keep up with Orcs that could bench-press a brick house and Tauren that could cheerfully cross a country without getting out of breath. He was tougher than I'd assumed, I'd have to remember that. "Alright, thanks Sara. Go tell Bramford I've asked for you, he'll know what it's about."

She grinned. "You won't regret it!" she said as she turned to jog off.

"And ditch the rookie!" I shouted after her as the door shut. Even though she had never been here in her life I knew she'd have no trouble finding her way back out. I had never really debated not taking her. If we were hunting something as dangerous as these things I needed a skill like that, that could track an ant across a city and remember every step taken.

"Here," Felswick said as she came back. Not with the tomes I had been hoping for, but the thin sheaf of papers would have to do. "Burn them when you're done," she said, and turned back to her quill and parchment. I didn't bother nodding, just walked out of the records room. I nodded at a couple of familiar guardsmen who hailed me as I passed through the stone halls but didn't stop. I hadn't known many people in the Guard during my half-decade, only those I had worked closest with. I doubted I would be missed all that much. I didn't know whether that thought made me feel better, or just a little sad.

* * *

Aaron's sheet just repeated what Sarah had told me. The single sheet of info that SI:7 allowed the Guard to keep on its members told me he was young into the job and that he had worked with the guilds. Nothing else. Either he was mediocre enough to have little written about him or good enough that SI:7 didn't want anything about him getting out. Somehow I doubted it was the first.

Kirei Ulane'Sol's was longer, practically ten pages, and long on pomp. Endless state visits to Stormwind, a list banquets and speeches attended and councils sat on. A few newspaper woodcuts of her hanging from the arm of Stormwind's nobility, even as she was old enough to be their grandmother. The pinnacle of Night Elf grace and charm. There were gaps though, if you looked close enough and already knew they would be there. Sometimes months would pass between mentions, and I wondered what she had been up to in those gaps. Stormwind would never have those records though, the Night Elf capital of Darnassus kept its cards close to its chest. There was nothing in the pages I could see that explained why she would let me in on something like this, and I wondered if the other members of the council had talked her around or had some dirt on her.

Finally the Blood Elf's page was even shorter than Vicker's. A mention of his daughter in the newspapers, just one more name that had gone to Outland and not came back. At least she would be remembered, unlike so many others that had taken the trip through the Dark Portal and died on alien soil. Kael'thas had been a tyrant, a traitor to the world and a bane on Blood Elf society that they might never recover from. Helping finally bring him to justice would give her some immortality, but not the kind her father would have liked. What Sara said made sense, Blood Elves were like their night-bound cousins; he'd keep that loss close to his heart and draw terrible strength from it. I wouldn't screw with him if I could possibly help it.

I watched the pages burn and sat back, the old wooden chair creaking under me. Images danced in my head of what the next few days would hold. Assembling a team, handpicking the tools, all the boring and mundane planning that went into any guild operation. At least this time I wasn't going off half-cocked like so many operations laid on as fast as this had, with nothing more than whoever had been available when the contract had come in. This time I'd have the weight of the Crown and SI:7 and the whole alliance behind me. This time-

_You had that once before and look what happened._

I turned around and went for the bed, as if sleep could stave off the leaking voice from the box inside me. The quiet little portion of my past Sildri had locked off when I left the guild for good, and all of the evil still inside it. It felt like cold wind against my body, and the scars there that the healers hadn't been able to remove. I remembered Erinys' last words before they took her away and wondered if she hadn't been right. Whatever. At the end of all this, if everything went right, I wouldn't ever have to deal with it again. If Vickers was on the level and honoured my blank cheque. If I could get done what they wanted me to do. I went to sleep with names and figures still running through my head.

I woke up to blood on the streets.


	6. Transintermission

_Summons. Respond._

_The connection is weak but suitable enough. I am here._

_You're barely there but I can make you out. Wait…one of us is missing._

_Correct. Accept this memory._

_Accepted. Processing. Finished._

_Got it. Looking. Done._

_Thoughts?_

_If this is correct he is lost to us. And worse, if they know…_

_We were so careful, and then this. I wonder when it happened?_

_Pointless to speculate. Corruption is there no question. Re-evaluate dangers. _

_If the madness is directed he will come for us. Everything may be lost if we are defeated by one of our own before-_

_No, you're wrong._

_Elaborate._

_A construct has been captured, or destroyed. They don't know what it is or what it's for. The greatest danger is _they_ will come for us._

_Mortals could not hope to-_

_We can't underestimate them._

_Your biological spine is making you irrational and afraid._

_And your metal one is making you slow and blind. If-_

_Silence. I command. Courses of action?_

_Bring the constructs back in to hunt our wayward brethren. Once he is dispatched we will turn our attentions back to the mission. They cannot be the ones. I have weighed and measured the mountain-bred mortals and not a single soul has enough power to meet our needs._

_It's them. I know it._

_The first course is best. Command your dolls, hunt down the lost. Location sent._

_That's close to me. I can do it. But why did he cross the ocean…?_

_Irrelevant. Await my arrival._

_There's an ocean between you and the two of us. We'll do it. If…_

_Speak._

_If we could alert the mortals to-_

_NO. You are forbidden._

_Agreed, the danger would be too great. I will go south and meet you, we will remove him together._

_Fine. I'll be waiting._

_Take no action alone._

_Wouldn't think of it. Going now._

…

…

_You suspect. Speak._

_No more than normal. Their nature is different from ours._

_Still, we will take no chances. When you meet you will assess if the corruption is there._

_And if any is discovered?_

_Excise it._

_As you say._


	7. Blood in the Stone

I thought things weren't right when I heard knocks at the door before the break of day, and knew it for certain when I swung it open to reveal Sara on the other side. She didn't waste any time:

"There's been a murder in the Mage's Quarter. Here."

Gods bless her. I took the paper bag from her outstretched hand and chewed through the rolls she'd brought me as I dressed. My hands wandered over my old Guard uniform for a second, but I left it where it was. Civvies would do for whatever this was about. I wasn't a Guardsman anymore. If she was here this was something to do with our hunt. "Well?"

"The Archmage is dead."

I almost tripped myself up on the cobbles. _"What?"_

Sara nodded through a mouthful of bread. "Found a few hours ago in his chambers. Apparently they just thought the old geezer was sleeping in when he didn't turn up at breakfast, but they figured it out eventually when they went inside and found out he was missing a few things."

"Well don't keep me in suspense."

"Heart, lungs, stuff like that. They didn't have to look far to find them either."

"That bad?" In ten years of a guild and ten more of the Guard I'd seen people come to messy ends, blood didn't faze me anymore. All I could picture in my mind though was that disembodied hand the Blood Elf had displayed for the council. Sharp blades hidden under human skin. I could see the Mage's Tower in the distance, towering above the buildings of the city. When we got there the entrance to the Mage's Quarter was guarded by the white-clad figures of the Stormwind Guard, and I hesitated for a second as I realised I had nothing that would get me past them. Luckily one of us did.

"We're going through." Sara held up something that glinted gold in the early-morning sun that I couldn't see from behind. Whatever it was it worked though.

"Yes ma'am." They shifted aside as one and I walked through behind Sara as she hummed happily.

"Not bad huh?" She tossed it up and caught it, other hand reaching into her jerkin. She brought out another one and handed it to me, and I saw the golden dagger-and-cloak sigil of Stormwind Intelligence.

"You've met our sponsor then?" I asked.

Sara nodded and laughed. "You should have seen the look on Bramford's face when he got told! Thought he'd drop dead but no luck. Our man in high places seems nice though. He told me to give that shiny little thing to you, and get you up to the tower first thing. Am I not the most attentive of hirelings?"

"I'm practically bowled over by your willingness to serve. Did he fill you in?"

"Nah, said you'd do that."

Thanks, Vickers. "Eventually, when I get us all together." I looked up at the heart of the Stormwind Mage Organisation. One of the most powerful groups in the city, they owned the quarter of the city their headquarters sat on and they liked to display it. Instead of smooth cobbles like the rest of Stormwind we walked over grass that was a brilliant green, passing shops that catered to the esoteric needs of the mages and buildings that all had something otherworldly about them. Strange colours decorating the stonework in patterns that shifted as I watched, and smells I couldn't describe wafted from the shops and homes as we passed. I caught a couple of glances of empty houses as we passed by, doors unlocked and wide open. Even so in my five years in the Guard I'd never had reason to cross the bridge and come into this part of the city. No thief dared steal from a mage.

"You never thought about training as a spell-flinger, Elias?" Sara asked as we climbed the gentle hill towards the central square.

I shook my head. "Never had the talent." I liked things I could touch without them drifting away or turning into smoke, and armour I could feel and touch instead of strange half-visible smoke for protection. I liked weapons that worked all the time and not just when the stars were in the right part of the sky or the moon was in a certain phase. Some of the mage cadre in the Irregulars had called me knuckle-dragging and close-minded. I called them crazy, and crazy again. "We're here."

"And not the first either."

There had to be a dozen Guardsmen around the tower, and then a couple of dozen more mages milling around all looking towards the tower. From the outside it didn't look so big but I knew there were dozens more inside, and endless workshops and storehouses. I pinned the golden crest to my jacket as we approached the nearest guardsman. "SI:7. We're expected." I said.

The badge worked a magic I could handle; superior authority. The guardsman, a captain who until yesterday had outranked me and would have cheerfully told a civilian to sod off back to Old Town, saluted us both. "Yes sir, go right in."

"This job I like already," Sara whispered as we crossed the line of Guardsmen and mages, and walked into the dim heart of Stormwind tower.

I looked up at the masses of stairs and doorways, far bigger on the inside than the outside. Somewhere near the top was a dead man, with powers I couldn't have dreamed of, but killed by something I couldn't explain and had to hunt down anyway.

"Give it time."

* * *

"Morning." Aaron Vickers held out a hand and I shook it. At least he'd taken the blood-soaked glove off first. I looked into his eyes and they looked haggard and black. Looked like he'd been pulling an all-nighter.

It was a gruesome sight. The walls of the Archmage's chamber had been covered in bookshelves and tapestries, tables stacked high with equipment I couldn't recognise; tools that looked half-finished and glass containers that flowed in and out of each other. Now blood was splattered over all of it, and behind Vickers the Archmage lay in his bed at the centre of the room, spread-eagled and very dead. I could taste copper in the air and felt my stomach churn over as I tip-toed over broken glass and spatters of dried crimson…_stuff…_ to stand next to him. Sara coughed and covered her mouth as the three of us stood over the bed that had contained the Archmage, and now only contained most of him. Something sharp had opened him from throat to pelvis. Ribs were broken and stuck up from the body, and the insides had been mashed and pummelled into an unrecognisable mess, where they hadn't been spilled out into the room. I took it back, I'd never seen anything like this. I wanted to find a quiet corner and vomit up the bread Sara had given me, but I could see my new boss/partner/uncertain-ally looking at me from the corner of my eye. I looked at the body until I was sure opening my mouth wouldn't make me hurl, and only then did I speak. "Poor bastard." I meant it.

"I don't have to tell you what we think happened," Aaron said. He was dressed in medical leathers, and was red up to his elbows. Other apothecaries stood well back and eyed us warily; he'd clearly been busy before we got here. "A wild animal might have done it, but the menagerie here says nothing was out of its cage last night. More than that, a mage-student is missing, and nobody quite remembers who."

Steel under skin. "There's one of _them_ here, in Stormwind." I imagined I could feel a prickle on my back, and shivered.

"It gets worse. Our guest Taelan Lightweave is gone. The guards at the Keep report him as missing when they checked the embassy-quarters a few hours ago."

I could still picture him clearly, that smug smile and those cold green eyes. Sara coughed lightly and raised an eyebrow at me; _who,_ but I waved it away; _later,_ as Aaron slipped past me and I had to dodge aside to avoid getting blood all over my clothes. He stripped the leathers off as he moved out of the blood-covered room, but fished something from its pouch as he did so, pocketing it. I didn't get a chance to see what it was. "There'll be hell to pay for this," he said when he had gotten rid of the sodden garments to reveal the plain clothing underneath.

"I can imagine." I had met the Archmage a couple of times in the Guard, on ceremonial duties. I remembered a genial old man more at home in his own research than going along the pomp and circumstance his position demanded. For anyone to go out like that…I hoped he had been asleep when it came for him.

"Stormwind Keep is furious. The Crown will have to act. Will have to _be seen_ to act. They'll send out the hounds, the Guard, everyone they've got, or else the mages will not be happy."

A huge loud mess that anything with half a brain, meat or metal, would hear coming a mile away. Damnit.

"How does this affect our mission?" Sara asked.

"We need you up and working as fast as humanely possible." Aaron looked directly into my eyes. "Get your team together, today if you can. SI:7 have a pile of gold nobody else knows about, I'm appropriating it. Anything, anyone you need to hire to get it done."

"Anyone?" I asked, and hoped.

"Anyone," he replied.

_Yes!_ "Alright," I said, as casually as I could. I started down the stairs and cocked a finger back at Sara to follow. My mind raced as we descended, an idea that had been bouncing around since the shadow council had let me pick my own reward. I was convinced now, it could work. I cursed myself even for thinking it but with the old man's death and the fury that the Crown would throw up, the haste would work in my favour. Vickers wouldn't like it but by the time I told him he wouldn't have a choice.

"'_Anyone'_? What was all that about?" Sara whispered as we exited the tower back into the light, the sun now high over the sky and the crowd around the Mage Tower three times as large, Guardsmen and mages and just curious civilians who lived around the centre of magical learning in Stormwind.

"Tell you later, time to get to work," I said. I didn't bother writing it down, she'd remember it. "Take the tram to Ironforge. You're looking for two people. Ask at the inn there for Duran Copperweight. Tell him that I needs a helping hand. Tell him it'll be warmer than the last time." Whether the old dwarf would want to put himself in the firing line again I didn't know, but he'd at least hear me out.

No '_and he'll know what that means?'_ No complaining about travelling hundreds of miles of noisy badly-lit tramlines.I liked working with Sara. "Right," she said. "And the other?"

"Sonder Kolram. Check the Explorer's Hall. Failing that, take a ride down to the dig sites at Loch Modan." He would come, I was certain. Sonder had been my best friend in the days before I left the Irregulars. He would come to Stormwind if only to tell me what a horrible idea this whole thing was. From there I could convince the big sap onto the team without much trouble.

She nodded. If she had recognised the names she didn't show it. "Where do I stash 'em?"

"The Irregulars' hall. Give them a pair of rooms in the place we usually store visiting bigwigs, they'll like that."

"Bramford won't." Sara smiled.

I smiled back. "Screw Bramford, we're working above his head now."

"Yes _sir!"_ She saluted, and skipped away into the crowd. Suddenly I was left alone on the outskirts of the mages quarters, looking towards the river. Two names I'd given her to track down and call on and the other two I'd kept for myself. I didn't look forward to going to either of them, but in the circumstances I couldn't just send a letter or a 'casted message, even if we had the time. In one case it wasn't possible, and in the other it wouldn't be right. One of them was right here in the city, may as well-

"You alright?" I turned to see Vickers approaching me in civilian clothes and not the bloody rags he'd been wearing over the Archmage's body. He'd even taken off his SI:7 sigil. I unpinned mine and tried to hand it to him, but he waved me off. "Keep it, it'll come in useful. Was that Sarah Whitgens running off just now?"

I remembered Sarah had said the two had met. "Yeah. Thanks for the badges." I tucked it into my jacket. "I asked her to go find half of our team."

"Only half?"

"I'm going to get the others now." It took me a second to realise my mistake, but too late to take the words back out of the air. Damn.

"Mind if I come along? I'd like to meet the people we'll be working with."

_Shit._ If I went to my first choice now he'd go ballistic. Alright, change of plans. Plenty of time and space to lose him between the first and second. "Will this badge get me a boat? Now?"

Vickers nodded. "To where?"

"Teldrassil."

* * *

From the bridge outside the Mage's Quarters to a ship floating on the water didn't even take a day, where some missions I had spent a week or more waiting for an open berth. I was still wondering how much pull SI:7 had when the merchant-ship welcomed us aboard with nothing more than a nod to my travelling companion, and without another word we set off, Stormwind receding over the horizon like a city sinking into the sea, and nothing ahead of us but the open waters between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

"So I notice you did some checking up last night," Aaron said.

No sense in denying it. "I like to know who I'm working for, nothing else to it."

"Find anything interesting? I never get to see my own files."

"You'd be disappointed. Thanks to your records I know you exist and your last name may or may not begin with a 'V'." The sound of the wind moving across the sails, a noise like fingers running over rough paper was eclipsed for a second as Aaron laughed. A real laugh, not some polite chuckle at someone's poor attempt at humour. Finally he stopped and I got my chance: "So what's not in the records Aaron? Sarah knew a little, the Guards knew a little. If I'm working with you on this, throw me some rope." In case you try to trick us and I have to hang you with it later. "Give me one question."

There was silence on the boat, the only sound for a moment the wind and the sea and the creaking of the hull, and I knew I'd hit something even if I hadn't meant to. Finally he spoke. "Only the one?" I nodded. "Alright, if you'll answer one back."

"Deal. Why are you on this job? You specifically."

He didn't waste any time. "I was on the closure team on your northern expedition."

I tasted salt and an icy chill on the air as I sucked in breath involuntarily. I felt like there was something I should say to that but suddenly I couldn't find any of the words I knew.

He went on. "I was new blood back then, still wide-eyed and hot and bothered to serve the Alliance, I'm sure you know the type. In SI:7 they put you behind a desk for a year, then out in the field as gopher for another agent until they think you're ready to start going it alone. I got through all that somehow without really leaving the city. Then you came along."

I didn't remember it and I didn't want to.

"I don't know what they called it, Operation Iceheart or Frostblade or something stupid and heroic-sounding like that. But they gave it all to me, probably because nobody else really cared. They gave me your transcripts and files and notes from the de-briefings and told me to summarise it all in one page. You know what you went through, you-"

May as well tell him now and get it over with. "I don't remember it."

"-and. What?" It stopped him dead and he looked at me like he didn't understand what I had just said. Which I didn't really expect him to.

Suddenly the wooden seating on the deck felt incredibly uncomfortable, the clothes I wore soaked in salt that began to sting the second I started talking about it. "I don't remember it anymore. A few months after everything was over I thought over the whole thing. Then I had a mage dig around in my memories to seal it up. Everything before and after is fine, but not that mission, none of it." I watched as he realised what I was talking about and the expression on his face turned from confusion to just a little shock. "I remember how things _felt._ The cold, the dark. Some of the emotions I felt back then during the mission. I remember my friends and how I _felt_ about them." The hate and fear and worry and terror. The darkness encroaching around us all. "But I don't remember why I felt that way." Like a gnomish picture-show with the visuals removed, and only the sounds remained. I thought of it as fog in my head, and I didn't look too closely at the things moving around in it.

Aaron stared at me like I was a madman. "That's incredibly illegal. And dangerous as hell."

I wasn't really interested in sitting down and justifying myself in detail. "Those documents you read? Our last reports?"

"Yeah?"

"We left out a lot. A whole hell of a lot." More than we swore we'd ever tell another living soul. "But we were supposed to be talking about you."

I watched as he visibly tore himself away from the previous subject, and wondered whether when his turn came we'd go back to it. He kept his end of the deal though. "After I read the whole debacle. The reports, the expedition, the…aftermath...I decided I didn't want to keep playing a different kind of taxman for the Crown. I asked for the next berth overseas to Kalimdor, and the next infiltration mission I could." He shrugged. "I found my niche there. I can keep things quiet, and simple, and relatively bloodless. When this came up the only other person with my qualifications deferred, so here I am."

There had to be more to it than that, but I just nodded. I wasn't sure whether I trusted the man entirely, not yet, and not someone who made their living in the shadows, but I knew he hadn't lied to me. Alright. "Thanks. I asked and you answered. Your turn then."

He sat there for a second again and I was wondering if he'd try and bring back my time in Northrend again. But he didn't, thank the Light. "Back in the meeting I noticed a certain…animosity…from one of my fellow conspirators. Directed mainly at you."

An easy one. "The Lady Ulane'sol and I have a history," I admitted.

"What? How? She's diplomatic, not military."

I smiled at the fact I finally knew something that he didn't. "Maybe it's hard to notice from high in the sky, but when you're a little closer to the ground you can see the fine details." I could see he understood but I went on anyway. "Kirei- Sorry, _Lady Ulane'sol_ is a spymistress for Darnassus. A good one too, would have to be to escape you people."

Aaron's jaw worked a little and I wondered whether he was angry or embarrassed that a foreign power had had a spy walking through their capital's halls for decades right under SI:7's nose. "Oh?" was all he managed.

"Deception with her runs in the family. _Most_ of the family, and that exception is where she and I cross paths. A daughter went and joined the priesthood, or whatever name elves have for it. She came over to Stormwind – to get away from her mother pretty much – and joined a guild. The Irregulars. She came in at the same time as me and when teams were formed we were in the same one."

"Even for Northrend?" Aaron asked.

"Even for Northrend," I responded as calmly as I could, stepping past the mist and memories.

"Is that why she dislikes you? Because you ended in going north with her kid? That wasn't exactly your fau-"

I see-sawed my hand in front of him. He was close but not quite there. "A little more than that. Sildri and I, we had the same profession and hobbies and ended up spending a lot of time together, in missions and outside 'em. We were close."

"Oh?"

"Really close."

"Oh? _Oh."_ He coughed suddenly, caught off guard. I wondered whether it was something against a mixed-species couple or just embarrassment that he'd came a little closer to someone else's private life than he would have liked. "Well, that explains that I guess." He looked out over the ocean and narrowed his eyes. "I think we'll be paying a bit more attention to the woman the next time she comes to the city though, he said with feeling.

I laughed at that. "Want to do another round?"

Aaron shook his head. "No, one question was enough I think. Thank you though. I know SI:7 doesn't exactly have a great reputation with the guilds, I appreciate the chance to prove some of those stories wrong." He looked at me. I had probably helped spread a few of those stories. "I won't pretend I agree with your…extreme approach to your own memory, but if what happened was even worse than the things I read, I think I can understand it."

"That's all I ask," I replied.

"It's a big ocean, may as well get some rest on the way. Pretty soon I doubt we'll have the time." He walked off into the hold, and I listened until I couldn't hear his boots treading on the wooden boards. I looked back out across the ocean as the sun went down.

It had been more than a decade since I'd been to the Living City. More than a decade since I'd seen her. My fists clenched a little on the wooden railing at the half-memory of that last meeting, and I wondered what I'd do when we met face-to-face again. One part of me wondered whether there was anything I could do to turn us around and forget the whole idea, while another, much smaller but more insistent one, was wondering whether there was still time to patch those holes back up in the fabric we'd once shared. Either way I would find out tomorrow.


	8. Bright Eyes

Sonder had once said you could tell how a city worked by the way it smelled. Ironforge; the sharp tang of molten metal that stung your nose if you inhaled too deeply, and the dwarves ran it like a machine, all exacting schedules and businesses and citizens that had their routines and stuck to them. Stormwind; a melting-pot of smells and scents that shifted as you walked the different quarters, from the spices and food of the Trade District to the unpleasant stench of Old Town. It was a chaotic mess that half the world passed through, either to stay and make a life or just on their way to somewhere else, and every race and group that passed it had left their mark. I had visited Orgrimmar once, long ago, and it smelled the same as Stormwind as the Horde's capital played host to the different races and their unique lifestyles. None of the old gang had ever visited Silvermoon or the Undercity, and we had spent a night once drunk and arguing how a city of the dead would stink.

The Night Elf capital smelled like a forest after a heavy rainfall, the cloying smell of wet grass masked by incense but never quite hidden. Sonder said Darnassus smelt of history, of long ages stretching back into time that other cities could never match. Duran had called it stagnation, trying to prop up a failing way of life even as the rest of the world moved on. Elves had ruled everything under the sun back when there was only one continent and not three, immortal and all-powerful. Then it had all been taken away, by hubris and treachery and a long, long line of mistakes, and suddenly they shared a world with others races they had to call equals. Some of the older ones found it humiliating, and wouldn't hesitate to expound on Elvish superiority if asked, or at least gently prodded. Not a very hard prod either.

"Gentlemen, if you would?"

We had been met off the boat with an escort, a Sentinel that towered above us from the back of the giant cats they liked to ride. The trip from sea-level to the top of the trunk that the city and surrounding land rested on had been quick. Anything that our escort had been unable to talk around, Aaron's badge and a letter in his pocket he hadn't mentioned to me before had cleared the way. At the top our guide had pointed towards the centre of the city and left, melting back into the shadows with an ease that only centuries of practise could make possible. Staring now across the 'streets' of the city, the light tinged green as it came through the giant leaves above us, I felt like we were walking underwater. We stepped across the grassy paths, passing houses that had been grown from smaller trees sprouting from the ground of the massive one we stood in, drawing attention as we went. Not many humans visited Darnassus, not when Stormwind and Ironforge were so much closer.

"Are you sure about this?" Aaron asked, jerking me out of my reverie.

"It can't hurt to ask," I said, as lightly as I could. In truth there had been a tightness growing in my chest since the boat had rocked to a stop at the Rut'theran docks, and more than once I'd wondered if this was such a good idea. I wanted to see her, desperately, but I had no idea how she'd react to seeing me. "Either way, we'll be back on the boat before sundown." I glanced at him as we walked through the city towards the huge marble palace ahead of us, but he wasn't looking back at me.

"Clock's ticking," he said, as if I needed reminding. I'd left instructions back at the guild, Sara would be back long before us with her two press-ganged members. If the Light was merciful we would come back with the fifth. Then…then I could worry about the sixth and final member of the team.

"_Elias."_

Something grabbed me from behind and I juddered to a stop in the street as a hand grasped the back of my jacket and hauled backwards. I looked across at Aaron to ask what he was doing, but he still wasn't looking at me. I followed his gaze, and realised before we got back to Stormwind there was a bigger problem, and much more immediate.

* * *

"How dare you."

In the darkness of the candlelit room she had relied on her voice to make her malevolence clear. Now in the green-tinted light of Darnassus she could use the rest of her body as well. Now she used it against us and she was _furious._

Aaron stepped up and bowed. "Lady Ulane'sol, we-"

Kirei ignored the man and walked down the steps of the temple towards us like a stalker creeping up on her prey. Light and all the gods be damned I'd really hoped for this not to happen. I thought back to the Sentinel that had met us at the dock and cursed. I should have realised when we had taken the long way to the top instead of using the teleporter at Rut'theran. News of our arrival had gotten to the city before we had, and all she had had to do was wait. That didn't matter so much though; here we were, and here she was.

Time for damage control. "Hello Kirei." I mentally slapped myself. Wow Elias, really?

"You are here for my daughter." Not a question. The green light above combined with her blue skin and hair made her look almost turquoise, and her eyes blazed a fierce white through it. Age turned humans old and broken, but to elves it magnified what was already there. Kirei Ulane'sol was a harsh beauty.

"I just want to speak with her," I said, and meant it.

Not fooled. "And recruit her to your hunt? Never."

Aaron stepped up in full diplomacy mode, voice as smooth as silk. "My lady, no matter the history you and this man may share, the task ahead of us is great. If your daughter's presence in our efforts would improve our chances even a little bit…"

He left it hanging in the air. Charming and convincing and honest as hell, but I could have told him it wouldn't work. Kirei loved her daughter with the overpowering fierceness of a parent who had come close to losing their child once and would never permit it again. She wasn't going to let such a simple appeal work. I wondered if Taelan Lightweave had gone through something similar, when the Horde took his daughter to Outland, and failed to return her.

"No. If you require magical support you may have the pick of the Temple, but I will not throw my daughter into your maw again, Conray." She stared me down and I didn't have the heartlessness to stare back. I remembered an image of her from ten years ago, an image very close to the edge of the mists in my head; weeping without caring who had saw as she cradled the barely-alive body of her daughter. We had been in Stormwind's Hospital, those of us who had come back alive from whatever had happened in the north, and I had been awake when Kirei had arrived by boat, the fastest the Night Elves had. She had sworn vengeance at me and worse. Clearly she hadn't forgotten a single word of it.

"Just let me speak to her, please," I asked again, feeling the push of anger in my throat and pushing it right back.

"No! _NO!" _The reply was practically a scream. I looked around and saw the faint blurring of air around us that meant Sentinels were close, their hands probably already on those huge three-bladed glaives they liked so much. I wondered if we'd be thrown out of the city.

"And what you would you say?"

The tension suddenly flew out of me like someone had grabbed it out of my heart and threw it away as I heard the new voice that came from behind the fuming Elf matriarch. Kirei spun around like she had been slapped as her daughter walked up, flanked by two other Night Elves, all three of them dressed in the simple white regalia of the Priestesses of the Moon.

She was still beautiful, an ethereal elf beauty with none of the harsh lines of her mother. Blue hair that was a deep and dark blue fell in a loose sheaf almost down to her waist, framing a pale-blue face that was smiling at me. I'd not seen her in years but I could still remember every contour and line in it, remember the warmth of her hand in mine, the white light that came out of her eyes without overwhelming the pupils underneath, giving her a piercing gaze I had never been able to resist. For just a second I looked at the empty part of my memory and wondered how big a fool I could have been to remove any memory that had her in it. "Hey, Sildri."

I couldn't have said it louder than a whisper, but she heard me anyway.

* * *

"You look good Elly."

"I look older."

"Well-matured."

"Nobody calls me Elly anymore, you know."

She shook her hand through my hair like she had never seen it before, her hand coming away with dirty-blonde strands of it as she looked into my eyes. "Really? I thought it suited you."

I was tongue-tied, utterly. We were inside one of the Temple's rooms. She had invited us in, and the Sentinels arrayed outside the huge marble palace had melted away back into the greenery as Aaron had led Kirei away, the two of them talking in desperate hushed whispers. Now we were sat side-by-side, just the two of us after so long apart, and I was speechless. I looked into those warm white eyes and had no idea what to say next.

She filled the gap for me. "So it's true what mother says? Are you here to drag me away to the big city and all of its temptations and barbarism? To risk death, away from the trees of my ancestors?" She smiled. Some older elves still remembered immortality; to them the world was a big wide place to get killed in and they stayed in Teldrassil, suddenly faced with the fact that _someday they would die_. Those born after the World Tree's destruction had no such fear, no more than any human or gnome or dwarf. Sildri had always laughed at the over-caution her parent's generation had, that tried so hard to avoid death that they barely lived at all. Like Sara she enjoyed life, every second of it. It was one of the reasons I loved her. "Yes, if you'll go."

"I don't know if I want to," she said quietly, and my heart almost stopped. There was only one question I could ask.

"Why not?"

She looked into my eyes again and she looked deadly serious. "Sonder told me what you did. Was it really true?"

"Yes."

She pushed herself from the stone seat and walked into the centre of the room where one of the Temple's aqueducts drained into a pool, the shining water reflecting up into her face as she stared down into its depths. Moonwells dotted the land where Night Elves lived, the source of their power, tended by priestesses like Sildri. "Why?"

I thought about lying for a second, but watching her back I just couldn't do it. I could see the thorny path her question was headed towards, but I didn't try to avoid them. "Because I couldn't face it."

She turned back to me and shallow happiness was replaced with a sudden desperate anger. "You think the _rest_ of us had it any better? You think we all should have chosen the easy way out?"

"It wasn't the same for you," I said weakly, no excuse. She looked like she needed to be angry at me and I didn't blame her. Had it been the other way around maybe I would have reacted the same. I sat there on the cool stone seat and took it.

White eyes blazed. "Not the _same?_ We were all there Elly! You think Duran or Sonder weren't suffering just the same as you? You think _Erinys_ didn't have the same things in her head? _Or me!?"_

"I'm sorry," I said.

She sat back down next to me and leaned against my body without looking me at. I could feel her warmth against me like a fire and I felt wretched. "I remember the north, the horror. But there was love there too Elly. Yours and mine. Was I worth so little to you?"_ So little that a few nightmares were enough to make you throw me away?_

"I'm sorry." Repeating myself like a stuck record but I didn't know what else I could do. I had told myself at the time the mage had put me under and started cutting and excising my memories that it had to be done, but sometimes in the dead of night I would wake up, a surge of happiness and warmth and _love_ flowing through me, and I wondered what torn-out memory it had belonged to. I had been a coward, nothing more.

"Why are you doing this? Really?" she asked, and listened. Finally she sighed and shook her head as she leaned against me. We sat there in silence for a moment before she spoke her question, so quiet I almost didn't catch it. "Where do we go from here Elly?"

"Give me a chance to fix it," I replied.

"What if I don't want it to be fixed?"

My stomach lurched. I didn't want to think about it. I still loved her. After the north she had went home and I had let her go, her own time to recover and heal from the wounds we'd all taken in that black and cold place. But I still loved her, and I realised I'd just been hoping to the Light that she still loved me. I talked with the speed of a drowning man to the crew of a passing fishing boat. "I was afraid. I can't make up for that, can't make it right. But give me a chance to try anyway."

She smiled at that, and my heart lifted back up, just a little bit. "Ever-railing against fate?" She turned and put her forehead against mine, as we looked deep into each other's eyes. In hers I saw stars and white silk. I wondered what she saw back in mine. "You want a second chance?"

"Yes." Desperately yes.

"Why?"

"Because I love you."

She hesitated for a second, then spoke, and I felt whole again. "Then give me time, to learn to love you back again."

I sighed, a relief so deep I felt it in my bones. "Deal," I managed to whisper. I didn't trust my voice to do anything else.

* * *

"Won't your friend be angry we're leaving him behind?"

She stood, hands planted on the railings of the slim Elf ship, hair streaming behind her as the wind blew us back to Stormwind. Once we arrived there would be coordination and planning and outfitting, and the hundred other small jobs that went into any military operation. But for now I was happy here, just the two of us and no way for the outside world to interfere. "Nah, he'll make his way back." Hopefully he was still arguing with Kirei about whatever it was you did when a diplomat of long standing turned out to be a spy for a foreign – albeit friendly – power.

"So who else is coming?" Sildri asked. I'd filled her in as much as I could but she was still hungry for more information. That was how she liked to do it, absorb everything in a single torrent and let it slosh around in her mind until she was ready to speak. Other people thought she was quiet, but it was a deliberate quietness that didn't leap until it had looked.

"Sara Whitgens – you might remember her; little younger than us, works with the covert squads – went to fetch Sonder and Duran. They're probably in Stormwind by now."

Sildri smiled. "It'll be good to see the two of them again. But I know you like to travel with six Elly, it's practically your lucky number. The old team and Whitgens only make five. Who's our last?"

I took a deep breath, and said it. I was pretty sure it was safe, unless Aaron had ears implanted on the boat somehow. "It's going to be Erinys."

She stared at me in silence for a second and I could see the wheels turning in her head. I knew the two of them had been close, in the way that opposites sometimes seemed to be, and on top of that they had worked together in the way only soldiers can. But Sildri was still a priest and a Night Elf, and both her belief and her race held all life as sacred. Their bond hadn't survived what Erinys had done. "Are you sure?" was all she asked.

"It's been ten years. The rest of us got another chance, why not her?"

"The rest of us didn't…" she trailed off like she didn't have the words, and settled for flapping her hands around like her point was self-evident. I laughed and she frowned, something she had always been bad at. "I don't know about this."

"Then this is her chance to earn it," I replied. "Give her at least that." Back in the day we had all owed each other a dozen times over, had saved each other's lives more than once. Sildri knew it, and gave ground.

"Fine. But how are you going to get her out?"

I tossed the little golden shield in my hand, not high enough to risk it going overboard. I felt a twinge of remorse as I thought of Aaron, still arguing back in Darnassus without an inkling we'd ditched him, and the picture he would be coming home to back at Stormwind. I didn't like straining the trust we'd built up, but I had a loyalty much older, and this was my chance to finally repay it. I caught the SI:7 badge on the way down and showed it to her. She just smiled and shook her head.

"You sly dog Elly."

"Woof."

We laughed together as the wind blew around us the waves crashed against the sleek hull of the Elf ship. Even if everything fell apart again, even if the whole thing was yanked out from under my feet and we all ended up in prison or worse, it would still have been worth it for this one moment.

* * *

The day and night passed like minutes, like someone had taken the clock of the world and grabbed the hands and spun them. Before I even knew what had happened the sun was rising over the ocean and in front of us the tall spires of Stormwind Cathedral rose over the horizon, and the squat buildings of the dockyards that were already swarming with workers as the sun came up.

"Is that them?"

Her eyes always had been better than mine. I squinted against the dawn light and followed her finger to where the water finished and the huge wooden piers began, to see three figures already stood there. Sara's short frame, flanked by a short and stocky dwarf, and the huge bulk of a Draeni. A smile crept across my mouth. "Yeah, that's them."

"You're so certain you can pull this one off, aren't you?"

Something so unusual and exceptional the Alliance would break all its rules to get. Something so dangerous it had reached into the heart of Stormwind and torn out one of its most prestigious figureheads and vanished into the city. One missing person amongst all that mess wouldn't be missed. Probably. "I'm sure of it." From the coast you could almost see it; the huge stone edifice that sat in the centre of Stormwind, surrounded on all sides by moat and guarded with the best the city could afford. Inside it was the person I needed. As I stepped into dry land I waved at the two men on the other side of the pier, half my mind was still on that massive prison. There'd be time for reunions later, right now I had to get to that prison. Even though I hated the place it was my next and final destination.

I would go to complete the team, and start the hunt.


	9. Angry Young Woman

"SI:7, for one of your prisoners." I held up the golden badge and hoped for the best.

It worked. The guard just nodded once as if Stormwind Intelligence officers came to this part of the prison all of the time. For all I knew they did. He poised his quill over the giant logbook that lay on the wooden desk.

There was no point in lying. "Elias Conray, to transport Erinys Heartfield."

The quill stopped mid-descent. "Sir?"

I put on the bored and irritated air of an important man in a hurry who had suddenly found himself stopped by someone several dozen ranks lower than him. I'd seen Bramford do it enough times to be convincing. "Is there a problem...sergeant?"

It was like the man could see a hand coming up to rip those chevrons from his shoulder. "Nossir! It's just that we usually have several days' notice before…"

"These are special circumstances." Gods knew that was true enough.

The guard gave in to the golden badge. Sara was right, the power the thing gave was almost intoxicating. "Yessir, sorry sir, it's just orders are…" he caught my expression and gave up. "You'll have to wait for the transport team to go down and then bring the prisoner back up-"

"That's no problem, I'll meet them there." I caught the man's mouth opening and closing like a fish suddenly plucked out of the river, but I had already turned away. The entire place stank of sweat and stale water, what happened when you built a fortress out of stone and then simply left it to grow damp and mouldy, maybe washing the walls with soap and a mop every other month. The guards – poor bastards, prison guard duty was always a punishment detail – stood aside to let me past, and without a word the inch-thick steel bars swung closed behind me. I resisted the urge to look back and see if the duty-clerk was watching me, and strode into the heart of the stone complex.

I still remembered the way.

* * *

"What are you doing here Elias?"

"Something came up. Something that might help."

"You can't possibly be dumb enough to think that anything could help."

"Hear me out."

I don't know what I had expected. A wreck maybe, or a shadow. Instead I was looking through a window into the past. Like everyone on the outside had grown older, but inside the stone walls of the prison time had simply…stood still. In the Guard I'd caught and interrogated people in jail before and all of them had seemed to shrink after spending time inside this rotten place, like their sentences were somehow physical things that bore down on them and crushed them, but Erinys was the same as ever. Even slouched over with her arms resting on the cell door her head was still above mine, and though it was hidden in a badly-fitting and handed-down prison uniform the body underneath hadn't wasted away or gone soft at all. If she had been a foot or two shorter she would have looked ridiculous, a circus-freak strongman, but stretched out on her frame it looked perfectly natural. Even the face was the same, grey eyes staring out at me with an expression hovering somewhere between annoyance and neutrality. Even from behind bars she projected a predatory power. Little wonder the guard had waved off and walked away before we'd arrived at the corridor her cell was in. Some strange once-in-a-generation mix of breeding, upbringing, personality and luck had come together to make Erinys into what she was; seven feet of hard-headed and stubborn strength, a harshly beautiful system bred and trained to deliver a massive blade of steel into the enemy as fast and as hard as possible. The only difference from the woman I had known back then was the hair. Erinys had been proud of that hair; a gigantic raven-black sheaf of it that fell almost past her knees, and she had kept it in a huge ornate braid that no matter what we'd told her about grabbing hands and weak points she had absolutely refused to trim or shorten. Now it clung to her in unwashed clumps, loose and lanky with grease. She hadn't cut it though, and even before we started talking I knew I'd get what I came here for.

"We agreed this wasn't good for either of us, not after the last time," she said, as calmly as two colleagues talking as they met on the street, and not as if one of them was behind the bars of a cell in the prison's most deeply-buried wings.

The last time had been seven years ago and had ended in a screaming argument that ended with me thrown out of the prison. I didn't waste any time. "I've been offered a job. One with serious pull."

Her mouth twisted up into a half smile. "What did I keep telling you?"

I had to smile back. "I've not pushed my luck yet. But I'm not kidding about the job either Erinys. It's Alliance. A blank ticket during, a blank cheque after."

Her hands wrapped around the bars and she leaned back, letting her arms take her weight like she was trying to rip the door from its hinges. She was looking up at the ceiling though, and her eyes were closed. When we had been in the guild she had always done that when she was thinking, just stare up at the sky, and remove every distraction from her vision. Her hair hung straight down and I wondered how heavy it was. It looked like they hadn't let her clean it; it must have felt like a ball and chain attached to her scalp. She wouldn't give them the pleasure of asking them to cut it though, I knew her that well. "Tell me."

I talked fast. "The old team. Me, Sildri, Sonder, Duran. You."

Grey eyes pierced me right though. "That's five." She knew me well, too.

"Sara Whitgens. You'll like her."

"I'm sure I'd hate her. Who's our employer?"

_Our,_ not _the._ I had her, she just didn't know it yet. "Aaron Vickers. He's-"

"He's SI:7."

You've got to be kidding. First Sara and now her. "You've been locked up in here for _ten years_, how the hell does everyone know who Aaron Vickers is except me?"

She smiled at that. "If he's related to Charod Vickers he's SI:7. I've met that last name before. It runs in the family." And both of us knew she wasn't going to say any more. Erinys didn't like to talk about her background. To anyone. I'd known her for years before Northrend and the Heartfield legacy was something even I didn't know.

I could hear the clatter of the guards as they brought the evil-looking restraining equipment down the corridor, chains clanking and jangling as they walked. Enough talk. "I want you."

She gave that twisted half-smile again. "Don't you have Sildri for that?"

Ouch. "On the team. Just let me do this much."

She sighed. "You can't think of asking for a pardon."

I hadn't. I felt rotten but it was a truth I had faced down before coming here. Even if the shadowy council would have agreed to it, strangely enough Erinys herself would never take it. Even if the case hadn't been open-and-shut. That pride had gotten her into trouble more than once. Had gotten her here. "Call it...restitution. Or penance, or whatever you want. I'm asking you to come out once more with the old team."

She stared me down. "What is this, Elias?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're too old to go looking for glory. You're old enough you should know better."

I tried to put every ounce of sincerity I felt into my voice as I answered. "I want to make things right."

"How, when you don't even remember what you did wrong?" she bit back.

The worst wounds don't hurt. They slide in through your body like a needle through water and all you feel is numb. "That's not fair-"

"You ran away from it. Us," she said without inflection, like she didn't care about my answer at all, and that's when I knew she was angry with me.

Like hearing Sildri in Darnassus, and the thought behind the two women's words was exactly the same; _was I worth so little to you?_ "I wasn't like you."

"Evidently."

I could feel the argument coming on again, lurking underneath us and just waiting to erupt to the surface and make a repeat of the last time we'd met. I remembered something Sildri had said, long before the north had torn us apart. "We live with the choices we've made." _I shouldn't have to tell _you_ that._ I sighed. "Wouldn't you like to see the stars again, one last time?"

She tapped her fingers on her cage's bars for a second in silence. "Fine," she said finally, as her common sense won out over her pride. "But only because you asked so nicely." I couldn't help it, I knew it would rise her hackles, but I smiled. "What's so funny?"

"I knew you'd agree," I said.

"Bullshit."

The argument slid back away into the depths, out of sight if not entirely banished. "Admit it, I had you from the start. And the other thing."

"What other thing?" she asked.

I smiled, a real one this time. "You didn't cut your hair." The sentence had been for life. If she had really accepted it Erinys would have gotten rid of that giant mess on her skull. Even if she would never admit it to anyone she had still held out a little hope.

She clapped once slowly, for effect. "Well done." She paused for a second, her fingers drumming a staccato beat on the steel bars. "Who else knows about this?"

"Sildri. I thought bringing you to the briefing would kind of inform everyone else."

A faux-wince. "She wasn't happy." Not a question.

"No, but she'll get over it."

"You're an old man Elias, you're-"

"Going to push my luck too far one day, yes I know." I stood aside as the men opened the door carefully, like the woman inside would leap out at them and claw their throats out given a single lapse of attention. I looked at Erinys and she just rolled her eyes in response.

The younger of the pair held up something that could have been used to muzzle dogs before castrating them. "Sir, if you could wait a moment while we-"

"That won't be necessary," I said smoothly, and without waiting for them to reply gently but forcefully pushed the two men away from the door, and let it swing open as Erinys stepped through it. She stood in the tiny corridor and _stretched_. I tried to resist a grin as the two guards stood there looking up in awe or fear, either at the fabric of the ill-fitting shirt as it stretched across her chest, or at the taut muscles of her arms as she cracked her knuckles. She towered over them.

"That was mean. They were just doing their jobs." I kept a hold on one of the chains purely for the look of the thing, but we walked through the corridors side-by-side. I wondered if this was how all of SI:7 saw the world; a simple series of obstacles to be clambered over or slid around. It would explain some of the shit they'd done in the past, certainly. Spend too much time treating other people as tools and maybe you forgot how to think of them as anything else.

She frowned. "Yeah, well. They should have chosen a different profession if they wanted to be liked."

"You're unbelievable."

"I don't think…_Elias_."

I stopped as she said my name, not banter but slow and deadly serious. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw what had stopped her instantly. I sighed inwardly. I had hoped for more time, at least for time enough to get her outside of the prison walls. Now I didn't know what was going to happen. I just had to hope he was as understanding as he'd shown on the boat to Darnassus.

There in the doorway that was the only thing between us and the light of the city outside the prison, Aaron Vickers stood, hands folded across his chest and the golden SI:7 badge gleaming on his jacket.

He didn't look happy.

* * *

"Have you lost your mind?"

He wasn't furious exactly. Maybe it would have better if he had been, or at least more satisfying. Instead just stood there with his arms crossed, looking at the two of us. I felt like I was back in school again and the teacher had just caught me doing something bad.

"I was wondering why you took off without me back in Darnassus, but I didn't expect anything like this. Do you have any idea how big a noise this will make?"

"How'd you find out?" I asked. I still had a hand on the chain on Erinys' wrist and it clanked as she shifted on her feet. I had hoped for a few more hours before he'd gotten back, at least enough time to get her out of the walls.

"A prison guard 'casted a message to SI:7 asking why one of our people was taking a prisoner outside the walls for interrogation, unannounced. I heard it when I got back and I won't tell you how. I repeat; do you know exactly how big a shit-storm you're stirring up?"

I did. I also didn't care. I didn't like the Crown and all the rest of the trappings the Stormwind royal house dressed itself in, but I tolerated it. I couldn't stand the people under them though, the dozen or more families that stood the next rung of the ladder down and owned everything the Crown didn't. Petty tyrants that sucked what they could from the city and only deigned to recognise that other people lived in it when they wanted something. They paid their taxes – grudgingly – and donated to whatever cause the Wrynns were currently focussed on, and in exchange were given power and licence, and they used it to the hilt. It had been the whims of the nobility that sent us north all those years ago, nobility that liked Old Town just fine the way it was, a sinkhole that kept the lower classes in their place and away from the noble quarters of the city. I knew the news I was taking Erinys out would eventually wind it's way up the city, to a certain pair of ears. Knew how big a shitstorm it would cause. Didn't care.

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

I didn't say any of that though. Somehow I think Aaron knew it all already. "Our employers said we needed the best, you said I could pick anyone for my team. I pick her."

Erinys eyes shifted between us like we were both characters in a play and she was a disinterested observer. Or like a cat watching two mice fight, knowing whatever the result it would be able to eat the winner. Aaron shook his head. I could see the anger still there, but submerged now under an icy calm I didn't need any training to recognise; Spy at Work. "This isn't like picking some random cellblock for punishment detail," he said. He looked up at Erinys and his voice was heavy with emphasis. "You were an _example_, Ms Heartfield. For you to be walking there in the fresh air again would trample on the authority of Stormwind."

"Of the nobility," she said, and I could hear the tight grip she was keeping on her voice.

He didn't sugar-coat it for her. "Is there any difference?"

Something had been bothering me about his words since he had started speaking. Since starting to work with the spy I'd been watching what I said and what he said back, and finally it had paid off as I realised something his choice of words was implying. "Wait, you asked if we knew how big a storm this _will_ cause. How big a noise it _will_ make." Aaron was silent and I went on in hope and a little triumph. "You didn't come here to stop us, did you?"

He deflated at that, just a little, and I knew I was right. "No, I didn't."

Somehow he sounded both tired and on-edge at the same time, and I suddenly knew it wasn't because he'd had to run to catch the boat. "What happened?"

"There's been another murder."

"Who?" I asked as Erinys looked between the two of us again. I could feel the tension there, the light outside was _so close_ and regardless of her stoic pose I knew she wanted to be out in it.

"The Colonel of the Stormwind Guard."

I was about to ask _are you kidding_ but I didn't bother. From the look in his eyes I knew he wasn't. "When?" First the most influential man in Stormwind's magical community and now the leader of its militia. It was going after authority, no question. The Alliance must be shitting themselves.

"An hour ago," Aaron said, and now I realised why he was so on-edge.

"An _hour!?_" Between my entering the prison and trying to get out, the thing had reached out and killed. Fast. Too fast.

"It's not like the Archmage, Conray, it didn't try to hide. It's left a trail of bodies going in and out, five dead and three more injured. The Guard have mobilised, they're already headed after it. Whitgens and the others are with them. A second team is gearing up and leaving within the hour_. _You're going to be with them."

"Both of us?" I asked.

"Yes," He replied, and looked up at Erinys. "The two of us will talk later," he said. "Don't make me regret this." He turned from her to me. "Either of you." He turned without waiting for us to acknowledge him. Conray, not Elias. I felt bad about it, I wouldn't deny it. But I'd known him for less than a week and regardless of what she had done Erinys was one of my oldest friends and comrades. Either he would get over it or he wouldn't.

"What have you gotten me into, exactly?" Erinys asked as we walked out of the stuffy damp stone of the prison and into the sea-breeze air of Stormwind, Aaron already gone somehow. She hesitated for a second on the far side of the door and took a deep breath, not speaking. Just drinking it in. "Thanks," she said, and we both knew that was all we'd say on the topic until this was over. I knew how deeply she meant it.

"I'll explain as we go," I said as we walked to the jetty to take the tiny boat away from the prison and back into the city proper. No time to go and get ready, no time to clean up and prepare. I hoped to the Light and all the gods of Azeroth that Sara would be packing some extra steel when we caught up with her. Horses were already on the other side of the moat waiting for us, and I felt just a little more guilt. Aaron must have left them for me and him, instead he'd walked home. If I could make it right with him, I decided, I would try. "For now all you need to know is, we're hunting something. Something we've never seen before."

She smiled and it was like the prison had shorn away from her in one fell swoop. The horse bucked and reared a little as she clambered up, and even with her hair still plastered to her back in ugly lumps and dressed in grey prison garb she radiated confidence. The smile wasn't like Sara's, mischievous and easy. When Erinys smiled there was something harder in it, something predatory. "Then let's go see it," she said.


	10. Carnage

_Start with silk._

_Some people swear that runecloth is better if you can afford it, and mageweave if you just want to show off, but silk is the best; smooth, light, porous, all-purpose. The young breed with more muscle than sense can sneer all they want, but in the end they'll be the ones dripping sweat and exhausted when the fighting grinds on, and they'll be the ones catching colds when they spend all day and night in sodden sheepskins._

_So that's where you start, just a simple set of underclothes to keep your extremities safe from the rest of the heavy, sharp and above all _rough _gear that's going to be going over it._

_If you're a caster you're fine now, and you can laugh at the rest of us poor bastards as we struggle with pounds and pounds of crap while you relax in stuff that doesn't look thick enough to use as curtains. You're at the back of the line, you don't need to worry about swords and arrows coming your way, and you need your hands free and a clear mind. Can't summon the beyond to do your bidding if you're dog-tired from carrying your own weight around. All you need is the clothes on your back and whatever enchantments you've managed to weave into them, if your instructors weren't incompetent your shields aren't the physical kind._

_Next come the skirmishers, and over the silk goes the leather. Thick and cured and worked enough that it's practically rubber, and then a second set that covers your chest and back and limbs, anywhere a marksman could conceivably hit. You don't need the heavy armour either but not for the same reason as the casters. You need to be quick and you need to be quiet and steel isn't known for being either. Your job's before the battle and after it, thinning down the early lines and clearing up the stragglers. If you're in the thick of it you've already fucked up and you're dead, dead, dead unless you're one of those creepy Elf druids, in which case you're a bear somehow and this doesn't even apply. So the leather goes on, although I've seen skirmishers who've gone with half or none of it, quick as lightning but one lucky slash away from oblivion. Your choice, your risk, your grave. Get dressed and sit back and wait for the rest of us._

_Mail, and now every caster in the first group is looking at the Draeni in your army with envy, because those giant lunks can haul weight like no-one else in the Alliance, and their special kind of spell-flinger knows it and is being very smug towards the rest of your mage-cadre. It's not as thick as plating but if an Orc or a Tauren sticks a sword at you and starts twisting the blade, by gods you'll be glad you're in some form of metal instead of leathers. If you're a marksman you can still work your hands around the trigger of your rifle or the shaft of an arrow, doesn't matter if you clank and make noise doing it. If you're a shaman you wear it because; 'A' you're a Draeni and you probably barely feel the weight and 'B' you don't get your power from the ether, or the energies of the beyond, or whatever the mages like to say. You get it from the earth and the sky and the fire and you don't _need_ to concentrate too hard to find it, the damn stuff practically throws itself into your hands._

_Finally the rest of us, and we take the longest. Never mind getting tired during a battle, if we rushed getting dressed we'd fall over dead in the barracks. First leather again, but not as thick as the skirmishers and outriders use. Just a simple set of smooth cups and sheets that go over the joints and other places the average humanoid bends, designed to let metal shift over it without digging in. It's for protection but not from the enemy. It keeps you safe from the crap that you'll be wearing over it. Metal plating doesn't pinch, it tears and crushes anything caught in it. Like elbows or shoulders, or tendons. The leather keeps you from crippling yourself, a scaffold, and finally the steel goes on top. A suit of it. Your job is to keep your cloth-wearing buddies in the rear safe, or to wade in and start hacking. Throwing yourself between the enemy and your friends, or just throwing yourself at the enemy. Either way you need to be wearing something that can turn away a blade or catch an arrow without even denting. Fifty pounds of steel ought to do the job._

_Then the rest._

* * *

"Elias."

I looked away from the straps of my armour at Erinys. When she was sure she had my eye she nodded at the man next to us. I looked and she didn't need to speak aloud what she was thinking. I walked over to the Guardsman, if you could call him that. He looked barely out of his teens, and by the way he was picking up his gear, hesitantly, sometimes moving it to a point on his body before moving it somewhere else it was clear he'd never worn armour in his life. Erinys and I were wearing simple Guard plate, nowhere near as heavy as what either of us were used to, but this kid looked like he was struggling with even that.

"Sorry sir."

"Relax, we're in no hurry." I was lying and all of us knew it, but in the small armoury, with almost everyone else already gone he didn't need more humiliation on his head. "What's giving you trouble?"

The boy gestured behind him at the stack of gear still behind him. Not the armour, but the rest. I resisted the urge to sigh, it wasn't his fault. He had probably never been outside the city walls. I took a deep breath and began.

"First, supplies." I picked up a roughly rectangular item wrapped tightly in cloth. Inside would be bread, some kind of sliced meat and whatever random condiment the Guard had bought that month for taste. All of it would be crushed down to an almost unrecognisable form, and barely edible. One packet would be a meal, but you wouldn't look forward to mealtimes.

"They gave us enough for five days. I can't fit…" He gestured at the small pockets on the belt of his armour. There were nowhere near enough.

I grabbed four of them. "Only take enough for two days, we won't be going out longer than that." In the guild the rumour-mill always found out how long a mission would be beforehand. I slipped the packages onto his belt and grabbed the next item. "Water, take enough for three days. Always take more water than food, being thirsty in battle will kill you quicker than being hungry."

I glanced aside at Erinys and caught her smiling from the corner of her mouth, already geared up. She had scrounged what she could and looked faintly ridiculous in armour designed for a person a foot shorter. The tip of her sword in her hand barely touched the ground. "Next, tech." I glanced at the pile and tutted, grabbing things and throwing them aside as I did so. "Cuffs? No, a sword-tip in your capture's back will do the job much better. Same with the blindfold."

"Sir, I thought we were going to capture-"

"Crap like this won't even slow down what we're after," I said, more harshly than I had meant to, tried to cover it up as I went on. "Truncheon, don't bother. What else? The knife, put it in your bootstrap."

"The armour doesn't have a…"

"A pocket then, it's always useful." A small square of flint and tinder. "Take that, we'll find wood for a fire if we have to stay out the night."

And on. A whole list of things we wouldn't need to bring with us, and every second we wasted I was aware that something was running away from Stormwind as fast as it could, and some of my best friends were already out there after it. Even with Sara telling them what she could I worried. I stood up straight, finally, and looked the boy up and down. It wouldn't pass parade-muster, but it would do. "Let's go." I watched him leave to join the others and was about to walk out too when Erinys laughed behind me. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Out with it."

"It brought back memories," she said, and I had to smile too.

"Hey, someone has to do for the new kids what the old farts did for us." I never thought I'd be the one doing it though. I pushed open the door to the outside and the blazing sun, already at the top of its arch, shone down on the group outside. Metal gleamed in the courtyard as the Guards looked around at the two of us. A man in civvies detached himself from the wall and came over.

"East, to Redridge," Aaron said as he passed me by, clapping me on the shoulder as he left to go back into the city.

I looked around at the squad under my command. _Well, here we are again._ They looked a mixture of impatient and angry, and I knew why. It was their humiliation, their commander that had been killed, five of their soldiers that had been cut down with him and three more left fighting for their life. They wanted blood. I just hoped that their anger wouldn't get in the way of their training. I mounted up and the horse jinked underneath me before settling down. The words of the old man came drifting back to me from a decade ago, when I had been promoted to leadership of the old team. _Show confidence, show initiative. You will learn leadership as you go, and both of these will serve in place of that until you have it._ I took a deep breath.

"_ALRIGHT!"_ I had their attention, instantly. Twenty unblooded young – _or maybe you're just old – _men and women who might have never taken a blade outside of Stormwind until today. "We're after a killer! Male, around twenty years of age, dressed like a mage or similar! Armed and incredibly dangerous, _he will not surrender willingly._ You go in pairs, you keep your partner in sight at all times!" I pointed and paired them up, shouted directions and orders until only we were left. "If you find him you whistle, if no-one else is close you _back off_ and tell us which direction he's headed! No heroes today. _LET'S GO!"_

They roared with an enthusiasm I didn't realise I'd managed to give them, and one by one galloped out of the gates and down the stone-paved bridge of Stormwind, past the huge oaken gates and out into the forests beyond.

"Nice work."

"Thanks," I said as Erinys walked her horse up to mine. She was smiling slightly. "Still think I'm pushing my luck?"

"Oh, absolutely," she said, and before I could catch her whacked her horse on the flank, and surged off after them. I did the only other thing I could do, and followed.

* * *

When you live inside the walls for long enough you forget what the rest of the world is like. As well as the capital of the human Alliance, Stormwind was a bustling port and trade centre, but that small pocket of clean and trim civilisation was surrounded by hundreds of square miles of forests, the occassional patch of farmland buried in the woods. The town of Goldshire nestled to the city's south like a man leaning against a tall wall trying to keep out of the rain, but beyond those few streets and houses the roads ran straight east and west, not stopping until they hit the rivers that marked borders of the next provinces. On either side of those roads the trees shot up straight like arrows and sprouted leafy canopies thick enough to hide the sun in summer, uncountable lakes and gullies and caves nestled away in them, and all the wildlife and semi-sentient species you got in them. Every few months someone walked into that mess and never came out, every few months we sent out a search party after them. The lucky ones we found locked up and half-starved in some tiny Murloc or Gnoll village's cage. Sometimes we found bones, gnawed on by the wolves and bears. Most times we found nothing. The line between wilderness and civilisation could be pretty thin if you weren't careful.

Now I galloped into that mess with only a handful of other Guardsmen around me, after something lethal enough to punch its way into the heart of the Guard and slaughter its commander. Our only break was that we knew the direction it was headed, otherwise a thousand men couldn't have picketed the borders of Elwynn. Luckily we didn't have much trouble keeping up with it. The thing had skipped the city and travelled straight east, not even coming close to Goldshire, and thank the Light.

"It did this?" Erinys asked from on top of her horse as she looked at the carnage. "What have you gotten me into this time?" she asked in slight disbelief, as she stared down.

It had been a bear. Now it was just a collection of torn muscle and shattered flesh, blood thrown around the base of the tree it leaned against. The poor creature had thrown itself out of its cave at an easy meal and instead something inhuman had sliced it apart. We didn't bother dismounting; the trail of bloody footprints leading away into the forest was enough. Man-sized, at least. A small piece of paper had been pinned next to the tree with an arrow.

_E.C.  
Sent six down south and around to border, kept other three to chase.  
Doubled-back to attach this. Expect more of the same.  
Catch us if you can.  
S.W._

"This is your new recruit?" Erinys asked as we left the carnage behind us, the horses pounding away the distance as fast as they could. I didn't reply, the wind whipping around us as we galloped through the forest drowning out any sound I tried to make. My mind was whirling as I tried to out-think something I had no idea about how it thought.

_One bridge out, mountains north, Duskwood south. Will it avoid Duskwood?_ I hoped so; I didn't want to chase something so dangerous through a place even _more _dangerous._ Human-shaped, on-foot. Not as fast as a horse. Doable. Definitely doable. _What else did I know?_ Can hide perfectly, pass itself off perfectly. _Likes_ to hide. How can it hide in a forest?_

_Elwynn isn't _all_ forest!_

I pulled up as hard as I could and the horse strained underneath me to stop. "_Erinys!"_

She pulled up alongside. "What!"

I looked around as if a clue would leap out at me from the undergrowth. I hesitated for the second, the horse whinnying under me as I swung it around. I made up my mind. "Catch up with the others. Tell them to keep a picket on the bridge out and don't let _anyone_ past!" The more I thought about it the more sure I was. The entire hunting party scrabbling east as fast as they could after a single man dressed as a mage. If I was right it could use the hiding places we weren't even considering, then just saunter past.

"And where are _you_ going?" she asked.

No time to explain the whole thing. I swung around, south-east. I had a map in my mind of Elwynn, and on it my suspicions were all pointed at one place. Small, out of the way, quiet.

"A hunch."

SCENE BREAK

There was no sound. Not even the chirp of birdsong that infested a forest in the summer. The quiet felt intrusive, prickling across my back with the thought of what I should be hearing but wasn't. The horse cantered to a stop and I checked the sword at my belt without thinking as I swung off and down. It was like any other farmhouse, but if you drew a straight line from Stormwind to Redridge, this was the only inhabited building to that line.

It was like a thousand other fields in a dozen other provinces; a barn made up of four rough walls and a roof, looming over a small house of the farmer. The field was well-tended, wheat already shooting up in head-high bundles waiting to be cut down. But the farmer wasn't in sight, nor were the other animals. I opened my mouth to shout a greeting but thought better of it at the last second and shut it again.

It was eerie, I moved across the cut grass half expecting _something_ to jump out at me, but nothing happened. It was like everything around the building had just stopped, or went away, and all that was left was the oppressive silence, broken only by the sway of the wheat in the fields, a sound I'd grown up with but now felt bad somehow, like skin scraping across skin.

I knocked, as casually as I dared. If I was wrong I was going to feel like such an idiot… "Hello?"

The door swung open under my knuckles and I knew before I could even see in that I was already too late. A smell like old hot copper assaulted my nostrils, so harsh and bright I almost gagged on it. I drew the old half-rusted sword I'd been given in haste, the blade scraping across the scabbard sounding too loud against the silence of the farmhouse. I tried to look everywhere at once, moving my eyes so fats it almost hurt when a branch against a window or a gust of air against a curtain drew my glance. Finally, I moved out of the small dirty hallway, four sets of coats and boots hung on the wall of the entryway, names carved onto the wooden hooks with crude smiling faces and childish depictions of animals on two of them. When I looked at them it was like the smell was pulling me away, deeper into the house. I moved on.

They were all dead. I'd expected it since tasting blood on the threshold, but seeing them still grabbed something in the seat of my stomach and pulled upwards. Something that looked like it had been a middle-aged woman was sprawled across the floor, cut straight down and across into almost two halves, one hand reached out towards the doorframe she had never had a chance of reaching. The man hadn't even gotten that far. He was still sat, hands loose around his cutlery and the food on his plate still giving off steam as the blood dripped from his neck, running across the table and floor to where his head lay in a corner of the dusty room. And the other two, much smaller bodies…

_Don't look._

_Footsteps._

I turned away, sword still ready in my hand as the noise of gravel crunching underfoot came from the still-open door, the rectangle of light almost blinding me in the dim unlit abattoir the farmhouse had become.

"H…hello?"

Young. Scared. I could see a shadow moving outside, whoever it was standing to one side of the door, holding up something long and thin with a weighted end. A hoe or hammer or something similar. I could see him shaking just by the black shape he cast on the ground. I was about to repeat it when I suddenly realised I didn't want to spend another second inside the small cramped kitchen, the blood in the air and the bodies underfoot pushing against my senses and screaming for my attention. I waited until I was sure my voice wouldn't crack, then; "This is the Guard. I'm coming out." I waited until the shadow outside lowered the weapon, and then walked back out into the light of day. The sun was already on its way down, casting long shadows across the field as the trees got in the way of the light. For all that though I could still get a good look at the man.

An older son of the couple inside maybe, or younger brother. He stared at me, mouth agape. "I live here, what's going on?"

He stepped closer, trying to look past me into the house. Automatically, like I was back in Stormwind and this was any other murder scene I stepped in front of him, pushing aside the hoe as it came past my face. "Listen son, you don't want to go in there."

"What's going on? What's going on?"

"Sir, you…"

_Four pegs. Not five._

A step back, away from the man, the hoe still clenched in his hand. "Mister, is this your farmhouse?"

Two glassy eyes stared straight into mine and I could see something in them, a shadow, something, under the black iris that looked too big. "What's going on, what happened?"

_Stupid, stupid._ Between me and the horse and if I stepped back any farther I'd be back inside a house with no rear door and my own words coming back to haunt me. _The only inhabited building and miles from anywhere._

A whisper that sounded like a saw going through wood as he reached out dropping the hoe on the ground, hands extended towards me in like he was pleading for something. _"_What's going on,_ what happened? Whatshappeningwhatshappening whatshappeningwhat-"_

He exploded.

Chest bursting outward. For a second I look to see if there's someone behind him. But there's no-one there and I realise the knives aren't sticking through his chest they're sticking _out of_ his chest, and I stumble back over the threshold into the house as the man

_thing_

stood over me, something thick and black gushing from the gaping hole and where there should have been meat and bone all I saw was steel and sharper steel, the voice going on and on, faster and faster like a rifle.

"_-atshappeningwhatshappeningwh atshappeningwhatshap-"_

I jumped back as fast as I could scrabbling for purchase on the reed-covered floor, a second later the thing's hands crash down onto the space my abdomen was a second ago, reeds and wood and stone cracking and splitting under the insane bladed fists where his hands had been. It looked up and I had a half-second look of his face, splitting apart like rotted meat to show whirling _things_ underneath it, shifting fleshy shadows that could have been fingers or tentacles. Only one eye was left intact, staring out with a glow that could have been ruby-red or blood-crimson, right at me. It pulled back and I felt the boards underneath him groan and start to tear.

_Get out get out get out NOW or you never will!_

I took the chance, ran as fast as I could past him towards that little rectangular slice of heavenly light and the green forest beyond. A hand whipped out, wood splinters flying through the air as one of the gnarled fists swung past me, and I felt pain shoot across my side as I dodged just a little slow, and finished my leap in a tumble to the rough gravel and earth outside of the house. I looked around desperately but the only sign of the horse was the fast _clop_ of hooves somewhere deep in the trees and getting fainter. A gruesome tear and _CRASH_ sounded from the house and I looked around to see a bright prick of green light in the darkness as the creature tore free, not even a man now, just a roughly humanoid shape filled with knives and twisting weaponry and things that looked like tentacles made of rotten human skin.

I held the sword out point-first in front of me as it scrabbled up to its feet and charged, arms held out like a lover rushing to embrace his wife and still making noises that sounded like metal and steam grinding and hissing. I stood there with my tiny pathetic piece of steel and waited for it to come to me.

"_Conray!"_

Light blazed to my right and I winced, one hand automatically coming away from my sword to shield my eyes as my mind shouted _magefire! _as from the forest something pierced through the encroaching dusk like a lighthouse, red and orange magic blazing across the field to hit the thing mid-leap. Without the shout I'd have been blinded.

The thing didn't so much as look aside as a stream of fire hot enough to set the ground alight underneath it slammed into the thing like a geyser. It stumbled and fell sideways as the parts of it still made of flesh bubbled and burst and melted around the steel, and the final remnant of the disguise fell away, and all I could see inside that inferno was a screaming creature of metal, glowing white-hot as a flood of magical fire was poured around and into it.

"_CONRAY!"_

I dragged my eyes away and looked as the voice shouted through the field again, and what I saw was enough to almost put me into shock right there. He must have been hiding in the trees as I went in and the thing followed me, focussing and gathering strength for the massive torrent of fire that still poured over the creature. Arm outstretched like he'd be burned just as badly if it was any closer and hands hidden in the focal point of the spell itself, Taelan Lightweave stood his ground only meters away from the thing as it struggled in the fire and climbed to its feet.

"_DO SOMETHING!"_

He shifted his aim and for a second only half of the creature was covered by the flame, and my instinct took over. I jumped forward, feeling the heat hit me like a punch to the face, and brought my sword down as hard as I could on the white-hot shoulder of the creature. For a second nothing happened and I was afraid it would turn and grab me and that would be it, but then the molten metal of whatever it was made of buckled, and my blade sliced down through the thing's ribcage, cleaving off half of its torso and one arm. Pain shot through my hand as my sword burst into flame and I leapt back as fast as I could, leaving the blade in its side to melt as the severed limb hit the ground.

But it didn't go down.

The tongue of flame petered out and died and I finally got a good look at the wayward Blood Elf. His robes were tattered and ruined and he looked exhausted. More than that, _haggard._ He must have been sleeping rough outside the city after he'd been reported missing. What would…_no time. "Now what!?"_ I shouted.

In the half-dusk the thing looked like a nightmare, the remains of Lightweave's fire tracing across it as metal dripped hissing onto the ground below, bubbling and sparking as it dragged itself towards us. Smaller fires had already broken out around it and I knew it would be minutes, if that, before the entire field was ablaze. I had nothing, no sword, pathetic armour that had felt secure and well-made back in Stormwind's armoury but now, facing the thing and all the crazy twisted blades that covered the thing's body, felt worse than paper over my skin.

The elf was no help, just shrugging as he kept his distance. He was out, panting from the massive burst of fire he'd obviously had hoped would finish the thing off. He clawed to get air into his lungs and I could see his hands moving uselessly as the final sparks dissipated into the air.

_Goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, now what?! NOW WHAT!?_

Steel and wires wrapped themselves around its feet and it crouched there on the ground like a goblin, still chattering away in a gurgling rant as its throat melted around it. It faced me again and I could still see it, that single red eyeball staring out at me through inches of steel. It leapt, and all I could think of was how idiotic and stupid I'd been to take on this job that was going to kill me in my first battle with it. A human-sized mass of steel and madness throwing itself at me like a bullet, knives coming from its hand and arm and chest and from _inside its mouth _and I stood my ground as it came at me to kill.

_How humiliating._

For half a second I felt sharp blades across my throat and it was close enough to see that single eye, ringed in grinning steel and glaring at me like it could hate, and for that half-second it was like invisible hands reached out and pushed into my head and scooped and hollowed my brain out and shoved something cold and raw into the space. A half-second of cold green light and a flash of crumbling gold and something that could have been endless rows of claws or teeth grinning in the dark. I looked into the thing's eye and for half a second I wished I was dead.

Then it ended, that red glare torn away and out of my sight as the world suddenly lurched and spun around me. For a second I couldn't think as it felt like my brain was battered around my skull, then my mind caught up with my body and I had a chance to think _I've been thrown_ before the world stopped spinning far, far too fast as something huge and hard hit me from the back, and I slid to the ground against the tree I had just hit. My vision swam in front of me, all I could make out was shapes, and I couldn't do anything but lay there coughing spit and blood and watching as the rest of the fight played out in front of me in vague fuzzy images.

The thing, just a blur of grey shapes now, lay twisting on the ground struggling to get up, as something huge stood over it – _no, stood _on_ it – _and snarled. I couldn't see shit from the ground and my eyes were blocked by stars and white spots trying to drag me into unconsciousness, but I could make out the obvious. Whoever it was was tall, at least as tall as Erinys, and they were green, everywhere, face painted in green and some kind of animal-fur clothing to match. I watched as the new figure reached down, hands grasping bunches of something long and white, and then the wailing screen of the creature increased in pitch until it felt like my eardrums would burst as the green shape tore at its chest like a dog digging a hole, and bunches of grey metal and steel were flung away handful after handful into the trees around the field. The wail skipped and juddered as something in the steel nightmare's throat was torn out, and then nothing as suddenly a foot that looked too big and too white stamped down once, and then the endless scream cut off at last, and the only thing in my ears was the ringing, and silence all around us. Then it turned, and somehow even though I was slipping away I knew it was looking directly at me.

I tried to reach for the knife in my boot but my hands wouldn't listen to me, and all I could do was watch and struggle with my own body as the new thing _stalked_ over to me, until the last remains of the light was blocked, and I could see the outline of it standing above me, a blurred human face surrounded by something that could have been hair or grass or anything in between.

"You will live."

I only half-heard the strange voice as a strong grip pulled my head up and I felt the wound on my throat burn. Whoever it was they hadn't even bothered to put down the knives in their hands.

My brain finally gave up from exhaustion and shock and maybe just a little fear, and the last thing I saw as I slipped away into the darkness was a pair of bright emerald lights staring down into mine.


	11. Remnants in a Dark Forest

"Stop moving around or it'll hurt."

_It already hurts_ I tried to say, but a stabbing pain at my throat caught me up short and all that came out was a dull wheeze. Then it got worse, as Sildri pulled on the bandage and almost choked me back into unconsciousness. "Hey!"

She kneeled down in front of me to inspect her handiwork, close enough I could feel her breath against my chest. "It looks okay." Her eyes darted sideways. "You were lucky."

Gods and the Light I knew it. It felt like swallowing daggers whenever I breathed in, like the knives had somehow embedded themselves there instead of just a shallow slash. Another half-second and…I stopped thinking about it.

When I'd first gotten here on a hunch the field had been deserted, not even the animals in the trees making a single sound. Now as night fell it blazed with activity as people walked in and around it, different uniforms mixing and moving around each other like shoals of fish. The Guard squads skulked around the edges of the wheat and chaff, sometimes casually strolling closer as they patrolled to get a better look, but mainly sticking to the shadows to keep the wild things out, and whatever else was out there. Any bandits in the forests would be staying low tonight.

A huge hand clapped me on the back in what its owner probably thought was a gentle nudge. "Cease whining. Think of how much worse it could be!"

"I'd rather not, thanks," I replied as I stood and turned to look at Sonder. It was the first time I'd seen him in years but like Erinys there was something unchangeable about the old goat, like he'd just stepped out of the world and popped back in just in time to meet him again. He was tall, like all Draeni, skin a deep sea-blue, the strange gold-banded head-tentacles his people had hanging like a scraggly excuse for a beard. The silent workers moved around him like ships around an iceberg, not daring to speak. He'd have moved if they asked though. The Draeni paladin was the friendliest person I knew. He'd been my best friend for years in the Irregulars, and he seemed to be ignoring my departure and decade-long silence like it hadn't happened. I'd missed the big lug.

"So this is the thing, is it?"

Together we moved over to where everyone else – everyone who I knew at least, and right now nobody else mattered – was standing, the spot just outside the farmhouse door where the thing still was. Or at least, most of it. Erinys and Sara were staring down at it with something between fascination and disgust, Sildri with just disgust. Sonder gave it a nudge with one metal-clad hoof before being asked not to by a hovering civilian. Only one of us was bent down over it though, and I could see the consternation on the faces of the hovering civvies – SI:7 agents at least – as the dwarf used a small knife to lift aside parts of the thing and look inside. I craned over him to see over his shoulder.

I'd seen the Archmage's body, a wreck, torn to ribbons, back in Stormwind. This creature's…disassembly…had been no less complete. The stranger who had saved my life had stood on it, crushing its legs into unrecognisable stilts, and then had proceeded to rip it apart from the skin to the core. Looking down I could see things that could have been human organs made of metal or could have been crazed clockwork, surrounded by the wrecks of tubes and some skin-like scraps that leaked oily viscous liquid into what was left of its chest. It was a scooped-out ruin.

"Interesting." Duran Copperweight stood and looked up at me, stroking his beard as he did so. He had a lot of it, a blazing red colour, and it took a while. He kept his hazel eyes locked on the thing on the ground, clearly fascinated by it. Duren had been a rifleman in the Irregulars for longer than I had been alive, but his family were metalworkers, and some of that disposition had stuck. Somehow – and I still really couldn't think how it had happened – the Dwarf had taken me under his wing when I had arrived as a fresh recruit to the guild. Over time our relationship had turned from teacher, to comrade, to friend. The last time we had met he had gone home to Ironforge, to take over his family's anvils and do 'real Dwarf work' instead of risking his life for fame and glory. I'd have felt guilty about dragging him back into this bloody life, but somehow looking down at him, in turn looking down at the dead creature, I knew he was fascinated by it. "When the lass said you needed help she wasn't messing around." He took the small glass out of his eye and polished it absentmindedly on his leathers. "It's metal alright lad, but nothing I know, and I know a lot about metal. Mebbe if we took it back to Ironforge we could get a better break-up of the beast, but…" He stood up and glanced around.

Like some parlour-trick psychic Aaron Vickers looked around from where he was deep in talks with two other people. One of them was a nondescript functionary that even as I looked at him my mind filled in the word _underling_. The other was much better dressed than either of them, and his horse tethered to a tree nearby wasn't just some mangy Guard nag. Something about him shouted _noble._ Both of them walked away and mounted up, galloping back in the direction of the city as Vickers approached us. "No," Aaron said when he came in earshot and Duran repeated himself. "We're setting up a room in one of the Irregulars' keeps, you can study it there. I'm not risking a long journey."

"I think it's been well seen-off, man!" Duran said.

"Looks dead as hell to me sir," Sara chimed in.

Vickers just shook his head and gestured down at the thing. "Maybe. But are you _sure?_"

As one person we all stared down at the broken-open thing. Even if its chest had been torn out and my sword had cleaved off a limb, it still had three more. All of them had more blades and sharp edges than anything ought to have. As one, we took a step back.

"Right," Vickers said and this time no-one argued. One of the nameless men in the clearing had come up with a horse and Aaron grabbed the reins. "Leave this to the clean-up squad; we'll meet back in the city." He cast an eye over all of us and for a second it seemed like he didn't know what to say, as his gaze flicked from the six of us to the still-shining remains of the creature on the oil- and blood-soaked grass. "Be careful."

He rode away and then it was just the six of us in the darkness of the forest, the other civilians and agents falling into the background as I held my breath and waited to see what would kick off, now that we were all here together again. I'd noticed it as we'd arrived one after the other, Erinys being the closest and getting here the fastest, the others all following after. Sildri had already known and their greeting had been short and curt, but I hadn't had the time to tell Sonder or Duran. Sonder had reacted as I knew he would; he'd strode over to the woman the second he had seen her and given a bone-cracking embrace that had merely made her sigh and hug back. If Duran had anything to say then the Draeni's example had made him clam up. That or he was just waiting for the right time to ask. Sara had just stared wide-eyed for a couple of seconds before realising she was doing it and looking away quickly.

"So is this some kind of mid-life crisis Elias? Or did you lose a bet?"

I see-sawed my hand up and down as Sonder talked. "Little of both," I lied.

"Hah!" He clapped me on the back again, hard enough to wish he hadn't as the wound across my throat flamed up. Maybe it was the years living out of Ironforge but Sonder had traded the customary calm and stoicism of his people for an enthusiasm that bordered on the Dwarfish. Since he'd left the guild I knew he'd been working for the Explorer's League in Ironforge, and it seemed he had been enjoying his semi-retirement, unlike myself. "You still pick interesting battles I see. What have you gotten us into this time?"

We spent a minute in silence, just looking down at the wreck of the thing. I tried my best to hide it but I was shook, and kept my hands crossed so the others wouldn't see them still shaking. It had been too close, closer than anything else I remembered. If it hadn't been for the sudden assault by the unknown stranger, I knew, I would be lying dead in the soil right now, chopped and gutted like the other poor bastards back in Stormwind. All of us just stared at the corpse-slash-wreckage-slash-stain, and I knew they were all thinking variations on Sonder's words.

_What have you gotten us into this time?_

"So now what?" Sara asked.

"Now we go hunt the rest," I replied, grateful for the cue. "Meet in the old hall basement. Ask Bramford if you can't find the right one."

"Bramford? Ye gods, you did'n kick out the humourless ass yet?" Duran asked, spitting into the grass. The old Dwarf didn't like him either, for much the same reasons as Sara and I.

"Nope. Promoted him."

"No wonder your city's all screwed up."

They all began to wander back in the direction of the horses. Except one. "You're not coming, Elly?" Sildri asked, looking back at me.

I shook my head and sounded as causal as I dared. "I'll supervise the civvies, make sure this thing is cleared away." I tried for a smile. "Catch you at home, alright?" Home. What we'd both called the guildhall back when we were members together.

"Count on it." She turned and left, and all that was left was me and the luckless SI:7 grunts.

I rounded on one. "Can you manage the rest on your own?" He gave me a look that clearly said what he was thinking, so I just shrugged and turned away, swinging my legs over the horse and jimmying it into motion. It gave a heave and sigh as if seeing whether I could be convinced to get off it's back and walk. When it was clear I was staying up there it started moving at a slow trot. That was good enough, I didn't want to risk catching up with the others.

The man I was waiting for caught up with _me_ soon enough.

* * *

"Mr Conray."

He'd obviously waited between the ruined farm and the city, and stayed hidden until the others had passed. The elf seemed to materialise from the trees ahead of me and walked up to me as I brought the irritated horse to a stop.

"Mage Lightweave," I replied as I drew up. Now that we weren't in imminent risk of death I could see him clearly. The smoothly casual and perfectly turned-out Blood Elf from that first meeting in a smoky dark basement had been replaced with a grimy and dirt-covered man. He'd even tied his hair back into a ponytail to stop it from getting into his eyes, and he didn't seem the least bothered about the muck and worse on his clothes and skin. My first suspicions about him had been right, even if I hadn't seen him face down and blast away at something strong enough to kill him in a swipe; he was a soldier, not a scholar. "Let's talk."

Even the way he spoke was different. In the city his voice had been all smooth oil and barbed words, a typical snakelike diplomat. Now outside he was different. The oil was still there of course, the goddamn infuriating arrogance that seemed to tint the words of every elf, but at least now he wasn't actively talking down to me. "I was hoping for the chance. Did you examine the corpse?"

Not quite yet. "Before we start on that thing, what are you _doing_ out here?" I dropped the honorifics, he didn't seem to care. Both of us had bigger worries now. "The city guard started looking for you, after that vanishing act you pulled."

"A fair question, with a simple explanation. My elopement from the castle was not the most subtle of plans I'm aware, but I had little choice. I knew I might be blamed for the acts of that…_creature._ I had no intention of being restrained inside the city while our quarry was loose, no matter how comfortable my cell might have been." He shrugged and gave a pointed glance at the bandage on my throat. "A lucky decision, it seems."

_Oh, shit. _"Thanks for saving my life." I remembered the words of the shadowy council though; the Horde were looking for these things just as badly as the Alliance were, for the same reason. Maybe Taelan had just been sent here to deliver the news, but somehow I doubted it. "You have to return to the city, if nothing else to fix the confusion. Believe me, _nobody_ believes you killed the Archmage. Not after today."

"I cannot."

I had expected it, but it was still irritating. "With all due respect Mage Lightweave we have enough trouble right now without a Horde agent wandering around the continent-"

"The Alliance is making a grave mistake."

That brought me up short. I had been expecting an excuse or a reason but not such a grim and serious pronunciation. I stopped dead and he powered on through the gap I left.

"Your leadership are looking to exploit the creature it hunts, to gain some decisive advantage in the cold war between us."

I knew he was right, but damned if I was going to diss my people to the enemy. "So is the Horde. Are they making the same mistake too?"

"Yes," the elf said bluntly. "This is not something that you can take apart and reproduce in legions, Mr Conray. This is not some lucky discovery from the age of Titans, to be studied and catalogued. Not some trinket to be used as a pawn in our endless match of chess. This is something much older, and much more worrying. This is something that wants to upend the board and burn the pieces, and then use what remains for its own game."

"I'd say it was taken apart pretty conclusively," I shot back.

The shot slid harmlessly off him and came back at me. "Not by either of _us_, Conray!" Taelan said. "My fire barely slowed it down; your blade did even _less!_ The best we could muster and we were batted away like children. And when those knives came at us did that look like something controllable to you? Like something you would _want_ to control?"

Skin and limbs that slid across the body underneath that looked rotten and dead even as it moved and breathed. Metal underneath that turned to blades and claws and tearing implements in a second, and moved without logic. All of it wrapped around that core of green fire, teeth and eyes that ground and stared out with some barely understandable malice and hatred.

"No," I said. "No, it didn't." I threw that image back into my head and focussed on the Blood Elf in front of me. I was tired, and coming down from a gigantic fear-and-adrenaline high. I wanted to be back inside the city walls, with my friends. Not out here in the forest with someone who, pleasant words aside, was technically my enemy. "You know something. Spit it out."

Instead of answering me, he shot back with another question I hadn't been expecting.

"What do you know about the Qiraji?"

* * *

In history books it was the War of the Shifting Sands. A grand moment of history to be sung of and passed down for the ages. Demons and monsters battling together against the brave heroes of Azeroth and their draconic allies. The ancient insectoid race had started to head north to conquer and burn Azeroth, and both Horde and Alliance had set aside their differences to unite and bring them low. People who had fought in it were heroes, every one, and everyone who hadn't been there wished they could have been. It had been glorious.

To the people on the front-lines it had been the Twelve-Hour War, and thank the fucking Light and all the gods it hadn't been a single hour longer. An ancient war machine, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and magic-wielders and worse, had risen from the sands of Silithus and clawed and screamed at the sealed gate of that ancient place, just waiting to be released. There had been two choices; wait for the thousands to become millions, or quite simply to open the doors ourselves, and take our chances.

For half a year Azeroth had united, somehow, as one being. Differences hadn't been so much set aside as temporarily ignored, as the entire output of the Horde and Alliance had been focussed on a single place for a single purpose. Cities had gone without, as everything edible, drinkable, wearable and wieldable was taken – sometimes by force – and put on carts and ships going south. Hundreds of tons of material and manpower had gathered in Silithus, waiting for the moment when the gong would ring and the door would open, for the moment when we'd find out if it had been enough.

It had been. Barely. Swarms and swarms of insane insectoid warriors had flowed out of the buried temple-city, drunk on power and fanatical devotion to their God. Limbs like blades and magic we had barely understood had slammed into the front lines and sliced and chopped and torn through the people there. Simply an unending tide of creatures that threw themselves at us without thought of tactics or strategy or basic self-preservation. The battle-lines had smashed and melted under that tide, and for five hours it had been touch-and-go whether we would last a sixth. Everything had fallen apart, the entire military of a _world_ reduced to miniature armies that fought on their own for survival. The Qiraji hadn't tried to leave Silithus; they'd simply tried to murder everything in it. Colossal man-shaped dog-headed statues of obsidian that trampled us down, soldiers that varied from giant six-limbed shock-troopers that smashed everything they came across, to human-sized slim delicate creatures with blades for arms that danced through the ranks and cut life wherever they touched, to just literal giant insects.

It had been a desperate war for survival, nothing more. Fuck the history books.

* * *

"They're all dead," I replied to his question. "As close as we could make them." A couple of hives were still semi-active in Silithus, I remembered. But the insect empire had been broken and burned beyond the point of no-return. Nobody had pangs of conscience about that purge. Nobody.

"Maybe. But I've seen what they pulled from the temple-city beneath Ahn'Qiraj. Talked with the people who survived the depths. What I've heard and what I've seen here make me think what we faced here today is linked somehow to that darkness."

"The Qiraji, _here?_ In _Stormwind?_" I asked, but he was already shaking his head.

"No, this is different. This isn't some insane battering-ram like the Silithus hordes, this is more…subtle."

I'd seen the bodies of the people killed by the creature here. Knew the body count. "You think this is _subtle?" _I asked in disbelief._  
_

The elf shook his head as his brows furrowed in thought. "I think_…I know_…that we do not have the full picture here, Mr Conray. I've seen corruption. By demon and dragon and worse. The thing I fought in my own city and the thing destroyed tonight have the smell of something _turned_ from its true purpose."

I thought about what he said. Corruption happened, I knew it. You didn't go long in a real combat guild without seeing it eventually. People or animals twisted into snarling monstrosities or mind-controlled puppets. I thought back to the image Taelan had showed me of the one his people had killed; clean metal underneath a thing that had passed as an elf easily. The one that attacked us tonight had been metal alright, but wrapped up in rotten skin and with that pulsing green light that made me feel sick just thinking about it. The comparison was night and day. I thought about that evil green haze and knew inmy gut he was right.

He went on, like I wasn't here. "I believe there is a war being fought somewhere, beyond our sight. Tonight we met both sides of it, and one side saved us from the other."

"What was it?" I asked, and didn't have to elaborate on what _it_ was.

For a second he didn't speak, and then to my surprise when he started he sounded almost unsure of himself. "It was…" He shook his head and started again. "I have met Night Elves before, _old_ Night Elves. People that seemed to be more of Azeroth itself then of anything close to human. I have met dryads and tree-spirits and other beings _made _of nature. As if the power of Azeroth itself taken humanoid form and grace. " He shook his head and smiled. "All of them now pale, to the thing I saw tonight." He looked off into the distance, and it took me a second to realise his expression. He looked _wistful._

"She was beautiful."

* * *

"Take me with you, when you depart."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Your superiors have given you a mission of folly. To bring the creature home, to dismantle it and learn its secrets. I think, Conray, anything our people learned from these things would ultimately bring us low. Bring us so low we would never crawl up into the light again. I believe the knowledge our leaders hope to gain from these things is similar knowledge once offered to the Qiraji. We will not survive it. We are allies now, Conray."

I thought about it for a second, knew what he was asking. What he'd said had shaken me though, I couldn't lie. Everything he said made a kind of crazy sense. I wondered if it came from his job, from seeing the things an Archmage saw and losing his child the way he had. Maybe coming that close to madness gave you just a little bit yourself. "You have a suggestion?"

"Two lie dead, two remain," he said, and I knew he'd memorised those maps on the walls just the same as I had. "I believe the surviving pair will come to find their lost numbers."

I thought of two more of the things stalking through Stormwind. Shivered. _Crossing the ocean to Stormwind, there's only two real places they can end up…_

He knew what I was thinking, and smiled. For just a second the sincere worry on his voice was tinged with just a touch of that old arrogance he'd showed so much of back in the city. "When your team leaves for Ironforge, I will be waiting for your invitation."

I thought about it. "Maybe." Thought some more. Thought about the thing still cooling and rotting and melting in the clearing behind us. Thought about how hard it would be to kill again. Screw it, I could swallow my pride in exchange for some of the firepower he'd shown off tonight. "How do I reach you?"

The smile widened, just a little, then vanished. "I will be in touch."

Without another word, he turned and melted into the trees, and I was alone in Elwynn Forest. He hadn't even said goodbye.

_Goddamn elves._

I turned and got back on the horse, my hand on its flank making it jump in the darkness of the trees around is. It seemed more and more I was finding myself up at times even worse than when I'd been on night shifts with the Guard. The others would be thinking the same thing, knowing you couldn't think when you were dog-tired. They'd be bunked down, ready for tomorrow. Just thinking about them made me feel a little better. I galloped back to the city as fast as I dared, ignoring the feeling of eyes on my back.

* * *

"So what was that all about?"

What I'd taken to be one of the dozens of statues that lined Stormwind's central causeway melted out of the walls and became Duran.

"What do you mean?"

He shook his head like he was a teacher who'd caught a student in a massive lie. "Not to put too fine a point of it laddie, you stink of elf." He took a thin roll-up from behind his ear and lit up, that horrible cheap blacklung crap from Ironforge shops he liked to smoke for some crazy reason. We'd always kept telling him to stop, or at least smoke something not quite so terrible, but he'd always ignored us. "You're in deep here Elias. Gods know I'm happy to see you again lad but everything about this seems just a little less than sensible. Getting the old team together, even _Erinys._ I won't deny it was nice to see her too but it's just one more complication in the mission that doesn't seem to lack 'em. Now you're out there in the dark talking with who knows who, and it's plain you didn't want us to know ye were doin' it." I cringed and tried to look apologetic as he went on. "I look at that thing you took down and wonder whether you're not a wee bit in over your head this time."

I was reminded of Brorn back in the Guard HQ, wondered where he was right now. What was it about me that made dwarves treat me like a kid? "It'll be worth it."

He looked unconvinced. "Aye. Sildri told me a little, and I guess it might be at that. But still Elias, make sure if you're going to go out and pull the tiger's tail, you're ready for it to turn around and maul you." He turned to walk back into the dark city. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He vanished on the route to the hall, and I found myself alone in the dark, only the flickering torches on the stone walls for company. I looked back the way I had come, into the forest. If I strained my eyes I imagined I could see pinpricks of light far in the distance; SI:7 still swarming over the farm, cleaning and inspecting and carrying out for eventual dissection and more. I saw those green eyes in my head again and shivered just a little. Maybe Taelan was right after all. Something was out there, I was sure of it, and it had saved my life. For what reason I had no idea. If this was what being a civilian between the Alliance and Horde was like, I didn't like it.

"Just…talk to me," I whispered into the darkness. I didn't expect a reply.

I didn't get one.

* * *

Nor wind nor rain nor a brand new expansion with fuzzy pandas in it can keep a new chapter from coming out!  
Hope everyone is enjoying Mists, I know I sure am.

-Cobray


	12. Transintercession

_TRAITOR!_

_Calm down. I just-_

_I was to be obeyed!_

_There was no time for approval. It would have slaughtered them if I hadn't done something. Back me up here Loke.  
_

…_There are too many variables. The remote unit was beyond hope of recovery certainly, but an order _was_ given. However on our subjects I find my view changing the more my own servitors observe and learn. On their own they are hopefully weak, it is true. But in numbers there seems to be some amplifying agent which I cannot explain. _

_See! If we could just get them all on our side we could head back and-_

_IREELEVANT. You are re-tasked. You-_

_NO!_

_SILENCE! You will take the lost one's place in the south of the west landmass._

_What, when that's more than likely where he was corrupted _in the first place?_ Are you trying to get me killed? _

_Acknowledge me!_

…_No. I'm going to initiate contact, before anything else can happen that could give them the wrong idea. Contact and be damned to you, Orion._

_Request denied!_

_I wasn't asking for your permission._

_Both of you calm yourselves. This is not the time for rash words. We must-_

_I lead here. The orders must be fulfilled. The complex must be repaired!_

_And these people are the ones to do it. If I could just make you _see-

_Silence. Lack of loyalty, lack of judgement, incorrect thinking. The more you speak the more I am certain you share our lost brother's corruption.  
_

_You can't possibly think-_

_Think of what you say-_

_I will arrive soon. We two will finish the mission once the second of our lost brethren is cleansed._

_...If it must be done. But I take no pleasure from it.  
_

_I've learned a word from these people, Orion. I believe in the circumstances it is worth using. Bastard._

…

…

_I'm sorry, old friend._

_Don't worry about it. I'll be long gone by the time you come looking for me. But let me ask you something._

_Of course._

_You recorded every conversation we've had since we left the complex. Between me and our fearless commander, who's beginning to sound more irrational?_

…_I'm sorry. You know we cannot afford to fail. I have no choice, if even the slightest suspicion is-_

_Yes, yes, of course. I know you'll do your task and well. We'll just have to find out which of us you end up doing it on. Good luck with the search.  
_

_I would reply the same, but you seem to think you've found what we've been looking for.  
_

_I know it.  
_


	13. Copper and Snow

The smell travelled with me somehow. Like parts of the thing had gotten up my nose and were refusing to be dislodged by anything that came after. The markets and filth of Stormwind hadn't done it. Neither had the old grease and oil of the tramways underneath the city. Now it was proving just as resilient against the heavy smell of burning metal and lava that was coming from the doors in front of me.

"Mr Conray."

The elf stood there casually, leaning against the metal archway of the door like it was natural for a Blood Elf to be inside the Dwarf capital city. Figures walked past him in the distance but not a single one so much as glanced at him.

I didn't bother asking how he did it, or what he thought he was doing. Ever since our conversation in the woods his words had stewed inside me like a cancer. Before we had departed I'd finally decided if he wanted to offer help, that was perfectly fine with me. I'd tried to think of a way to contact him before we left but he'd proved as good as his word. But now here he was anyway. "Fast work," I settled for. "What have you found?"

"Straight to business, excellent," Taelan replied, standing up straight and walking over. He looked like the last time I had seen him, grim and grimy in the robes he had fought the creature in. "While I may not have the freedom of this…city…as you will, I have my own investigations. Methods of spellcraft, bounded fields and-"

I could see him go on and on like this and cut him off before he could get started. "Is there one of the things here?" I asked quickly.

He looked just a little crestfallen at being denied his soapbox, but quickly got over it. "Yes. Disturbances I cannot account for that match no Alliance or Horde species. Wandering in and out of the city at something less than random intervals."

I frowned. We were both close up against the wall, but nobody had even come close to brushing past us. In fact there was _nobody_ in the tram-station. The only people besides us I could see were fuzzy shapes past Taelen, out there in the city proper, hidden by some kind of heat-haze. "It's patrolling?"

"Or searching," he said. I didn't bother asking, he knew I would anyway. "I have no clue what for. It seems we must ask."

I thought about trying to have a discussion with one of those things. "Are you sure that's such a good idea?" I said, much more lightly than I felt. I felt a prickle of air against my neck, a breeze from the tram tunnel behind us.

"Something is different here," Taelan said, and shifted against the wall, like he was just a little nervous. "No murders. No killings. Only this single signature that threads in and out of Ironforge at whim."

"Maybe it's better at hiding itself." When we left Stormwind the papers had been screaming for blood and information. Aaron had stayed behind to try and cover us as best he could, but he'd not looked like he was going to relish the job. _I'll catch up, if I can sort out this crap,_ he had said, and something in his voice had said he didn't just mean the creature we'd…that something had taken down.

Taelan shook his head, unconvinced. The wind around us fanned out his hair in a stream behind him. "Maybe. Or maybe not. We will talk more when you arrive."

"When I arrive, what the-"

Suddenly the wind coming from the tunnels turned into a gale, and I had to close my eyes as what felt like a ton of bricks hit me softly from the side and started to drag me away. I caught a small wave and a smile, and then suddenly the tunnel rose up before me, and darkness covered my eyes.

* * *

A hand jerked me back and forward and it felt like my brain was being bashed against the inside of my skull.

"We're almost there, wake up."

I shoved Sonder's hands off my shoulder before the giant blue oaf broke my collarbone. "Enough already." I reached behind my head, to the cold steel of the tram wall. When I brought my hand back in front of my face I was holding a piece of paper, arcane lines and whorls etched onto it in red and blue squiggles. The red looked like dried blood. Even as I watched it disintegrated in my hand. A one-time message, just waiting for me to come along. Taelan you show-off.

A single blue eyebrow rose up. "Elves?" He wasn't angry at least. Some Draeni flew would have flew into a rage if they'd found out a Blood Elf was on the same side as them. Luckily the paladin in front of me had a more realistic worldview.

"Long story," I replied.

"Ah, our mysterious ally?"

Goddamnit. I looked askance at Duran, who just shrugged and went back to smoking on his foul pope. I had asked him not to tell anyone, but obviously the old man had decided he knew better than I did. The trouble was he tended to be right. Oh well. "Yeah, sorry."

"It's not good to keep secrets, Elias," Sonder said, voice tinged with reproach.

I stretched and felt the knots in my neck and body groan in protest. We'd come across wearing armour, in case we had to use it as soon as we got there. Once I'd have called that paranoid, but since the long night in the woods I'd decided a little paranoia wouldn't be such a bad thing. "Everything's been weird lately," was all I said in reply. "Listen…"

The scenery rushed by us, oceans and pipes and steel frames blurring together as our tram rushed past them faster than any horse. A thin carriage of steel and souls that swept underneath the Eastern Kingdoms, a testament to ingenuity. Uncomfortable as all hell, but at least I knew if I spoke I wouldn't be overheard, the other carriages being separated by the howling wind as if there was a steel wall between us. I explained, and Sonder listened.

"He makes good points," he said when I was done. The Draeni leaned up against the steel beam, his huge hammer clinking against the back as he did so. He'd brought it back from Outland, from the cave of some giant-beast he'd helped kill, and it glinted purple-and-blue in the light like it was glass. It wasn't glass though. I'd seen him hit people with it. "Did you believe him?"

"Yes." I'd thought about it all day afterwards, and then again the night before we'd left for Ironforge. I'd met liars before, and was a pretty good one when I had to be. The Blood Elf hadn't talked like a lying man. I turned, to the third occupant of our fragile steel basket. "What do you think?" I asked. It was the first time we'd been able to really talk since I'd fought the thing in the woods, and I wanted his opinion.

Duran took the pipe back out of his mouth. He didn't look at either of us though, barely adults compared to him. He was staring past us at something only he could see. Memories. Unlike us, Duran had fought in the Twelve-Hour War. There was a patch you couldn't see from the front, where the red hair of his long beard twisted and wavered. There was a scar under it, where some Qiraji blade or talon had come this close to cutting off half his face. "Pointy-eared devil makes sense," he replied in that gruff voice he had when he was forced to concede someone other than him had a good point to make. He stood and his leather shifted around him. Unlike the two of us, Duran was a long-range fighter. The rifle slung over his shoulder was older, the wooden stock almost black with age, but the Dwarf made sure the thing could still fire, and I'd seen him put bulls-eyes through things barely bigger than the bullets it fired, at so great a range I couldn't see what he was shooting at. He adjusted it now so it wasn't sticking in his back, and went on. "That damn desert and the things that came out of it, there was somethin' down there alright. Like it was trying to come up through our boots at us. You know what happened to the lads that went down there?" He looked between us and we just nodded. Death, or worse. "They got too close to it. Whatever it were. They smelled wrong too." He crinkled his nose like he was back there. "Like whatever were down there followed 'em back up. They smelled rotten." He shrugged and looked back at us. "Hell, maybe whatever's down there got let out, and now we're chasin' after it."

"Cheery thought," I shot back. I leaned back as the tram slowed down, brakes screeching in the underground tunnel as it suddenly came to an end and we shot out of the glum darkness into the harsh white lights of the station. People were already waiting there to get on, but they gave us wide berth as we passed by. A couple stared at us, and one of them waved to Sonder, who smiled and waved back. "You a celebrity here or something?"

He smiled wider, and his teeth gleamed. "I help out where I can. Is it my fault if I am noticed?"

A giant blue alien nearly twice as tall as any Dwarf, in a city of Dwarves. "No, of course. What was I thinking?"

* * *

"_Gods, do we really have to?"_

"_Hey I don't mind, I could use some sun."_

"_Won't they complain about Alliance forces in their town?"_

"_If we can pay they won't care," I replied. "And we can pay." I looked across at Aaron, who just nodded._

"_We have a letter written out," the intelligence man said. "Give it to the one calls himself an admiral, he'll honour it. Or at least he'll honour the gold we'll be giving him."_

_Erinys and Sildri just nodded, but Sara still looked a little unsure. Not surprising, the Alliance tended to leave the Goblin towns alone. They wanted to make money, not fight, and being good neighbours meant less troops ended up being deployed near them. "The cartel wants to stay on good terms with both sides. We're not going after Horde soldiers in Booty Bay, so they won't mind looking the other way so much."_

"_Will they mind if something sharp and nasty comes along and we start tearing the place down around their ears?" Erinys asked, and got an askance look from Sildri._

_Aaron shrugged. I hadn't expected it, but he seemed to get along okay with Erinys after their first meeting. Either he'd accepted my little trick, or he'd come to some other agreement with her when I hadn't been looking. Either way suited me fine. "Then we might end up sending more than _a little_ gold."_

"_Are we going to end up beggaring Si:7 by the time we're done?"_

"_I doubt it, Ms Heartfield."_

"_Alright." My body was aching and my head hurting. We'd been in the pokey little underground room for what felt like days, just throwing ideas and plans back and forth, with Vickers wandering in from time to time to update the maps on the walls. The red lines had crept across the globe as the latest reports had come in, and eventually we'd realised we would have to start moving or whatever sorceries and skills the other cities were using to track them failed, and we'd be left even worse off than before. I wasn't happy splitting up the group so soon after making it, but there was just no time. Like we were being rushed down a long corridor with a blindfold on, and no idea if the light we were seeing was sunlight or a blazing fire._

_In a darker moment I thought that if it turned out to be fire, at least half of us would be elsewhere when it ignited._

* * *

Sonder left the shadow of the archway and took a deep breath, the way other people would take deep breaths of mountain air. I'd never have done it though, I liked my lungs the way they were.

"Truly, have you ever smelled anything like it?" the Draeni exclaimed happily.

"Lad, you've got something wrong with your head," Duran replied dolefully.

"What, you do not love your own city Duran?"

"It's my city, I'm allowed to not love it," the Dwarf shot back.

Machine-oil. Melting steel and other metal. Chemicals and brimstone. Alchemical powders and mixtures that even out of sight were making my eyes water. This had always been Ironforge's smell to me. The idea that people could live here with it had always seemed weird. The city had been dug into the mountain, giant gnome-built lights and torches keeping the place lit as people moved in and out of houses built into the walls of the cavernous city. If Stormwind was the Alliance's market then Ironforge was its…well…forge.

It's distillery, too.

"So assuming this giant blue sod can be made to work, what's our next step?" _So I can tell you what a bad idea it is, _left unsaid.

* * *

"_How far can we spread this?"_

"_Not far. Panic is bad enough already, we don't want this little conspiracy to get any larger than it is if we can help it."_

_I shook my head. "That isn't going to be possible. Before I saw that thing in action I thought we'd be fine alone, but now I don't think so."_

_I watched as he stood there in silence, just staring down at the pages he'd brought, a machine computing new data. Finally he just nodded. "Fine."_

"_Fine what?"_

"_Fine, we'll arrange something." Vickers looked to his right. "Sr Copperweight, anything yet?"_

_Duran was annoyed, the smoke from his pipe coiling around the ceiling as he puffed. Vickers had been more than fair to us and he knew it, but it still annoyed the old man used to getting his way. The golem – hell, had to call it something – had been burned hours ago, the remains scattered to the wind. The parts that hadn't burned we had watched as faceless SI:7 agents had put them into heavy iron boxes and taken them away. Sara had gone with them, told us on the way back she had watched as they were dropped into the ocean a dozen miles from shore. It was dead and gone, forever._

_I slept better that night._

"_Nothing. Thought there mighta been something in the body but no such luck. If it's a machine it's beyond anything I've ever seen in the family forges. If it's a livin' thing then I don't know any power that'd make such a thing." I had my own insight into what it might have been, but I wanted to keep Taelan's information a little more closely-held._

_Aaron just nodded. "It would have been nice, but oh well." He turned and looked at me. "You have a plan?" We all nodded back at him. He reached into his hand and tossed out more gold badges onto the table. Sara and I put them in our pocket without a thought. Sonder and Duran stared at theirs for a second as if in awe of the power they represented. Erinys stared at hers for a second in distaste before stashing it away. "Use them if you have to." He held out a piece of paper to me and I grabbed it. _

"_What's this?"_

"_A list of names that'll give an audience, no questions."_

_I realised what it was instantly, just nodded and stashed it away. I caught a couple of glances from the others, but they didn't enquire. All of us – even Aaron – were soldiers. Everyone knew about deniability. I could look around and see them all thinking of what it would be like being questioned by one of these golems, and wondered what conclusions they'd reach._

* * *

"Mr Conray! And friends! Nice to see you again, and this time in the light no less!"

Sonder and I bowed while Duran shook hands. I'd made the mistake of kneeling to shake a Gnome's hand once, never again. "Sir, thank you for seeing us."

The Gnome looked up at me and the effect was unnerving. He had red hair like Duran, but where my friend's hair was neatly cut and rowed, his was all crazy tufts and edges, some of them clearly half-burned away. But what really drew attention was his eyes. One was a clear blue, the cleared I'd ever seen. The other was red, and as I watched it focussed on me slowly, like a whirring machine. After a second, I realised that it was. Sometime in the past the man had lost his eye, and replaced it with one of his own inventions.

Whether he'd lost it in the field or to one of his own experiment's mishaps I didn't ask.

_Diley Cogwrench_, the piece of paper had said. One of the shadow-council that had roped me into this whole mess and dragged my team with me. Just like Kirei and the others; not the leader of his people, but certainly near the top. "Doctor, please, my ego demands it. You're here about our mysterious self-propelled combat mechanoid?"

"We called it a golem, doctor," I said, feeling a little silly. We had been ushered into the heart of Ironforge's Gnomish quarter, and every square inch of the room we were in was covered in machinery and parts. Apparatus that I couldn't even recognise, glass tumblers that seemed to twist through themselves and vials that contained liquid that seemed to be trying to fight their way out of the glass looked back at me.

My interruption didn't slow the man down. "A short name, a short name if you ask me but the first specimen was yours, admittedly, and so go the naming rights, alas. How I would have loved to study it! I don't suppose you smuggled some of it out from that drab city of yours, did you?"

Duran shifted his weight around. "Burned and sunk," he replied. _And good riddance,_ I knew he was thinking. Duran was a man with his feet on the ground, like me. He liked steel and iron and simple things that did what they were supposed to do. Gnomes liked to try things they didn't know the results of. A few of those mixtures on the bench looked a little stranger than your average draught.

"Shame. Oh well, oh well, at least there's more where that came from." Instead of sitting down at his desk he pivoted up from the chair and sat on it, cross-legged, facing us like we were three specimens that had wandered into the killing-jar of their own will. "Better luck this time, eh?" His good eye gleamed as he said it, and Taelan's words came back to me.

_I believe the knowledge our leaders hope to gain from these things is similar knowledge once offered to the Qiraji._

_We will not survive it._

"We'll capture it if we can," I said, utterly confident we wouldn't get the chance.

One eye gleamed manically with enthusiasm and hunger. The other gleamed with a glass shine and gears. "What will you require of me?"

* * *

"What an interesting fellow."

I looked askance at Sonder and wondered, not for the first time since I'd known him, if he was for real. "Don't you dislike _anyone?_"

"It takes all sorts to make a city, Elias. You should be more open." Still no, then. It was hard to dislike Sonder, but sometimes easy to be exasperated.

"He is a lunatic," Duran said suddenly, and both of us looked around at him. He'd said he was taking us down to Ironforge's war-quarter, where the armoury and barracks were, but I'd been to Ironforge before and it seemed to me we should have reached it by now.

"Say what now?" I asked.

Duran shrugged and lit his pipe. I noticed as he did so even some of the other Dwarves that pushed past us in the crowd frowned at the smell. "The man has his head so far in the clouds he can't see where his feet are stepping."

Long battles had taught me it was always worth sounding Duran out when he had an idea. "You think that'll be a problem? He was offering his help."

"Aye, and we'll take it," Duran said. "But when the time comes…"

"When the time comes, we make sure it's us on the scene and not them," Sonder said, a half breath before I could. He shrugged as he saw us both looking up at him. "Your Blood Elf friend, he made a _really_ good point," was all he said.

"He's not my friend. I- _ow!"_ I winced as suddenly something burned across my hand.

"Are you alright?"

"You okay Elias?"

I looked down at my palm. It looked like I'd been stung by some kind of jungle wasp. As I watched a red stain crept from the centre of my palm like a bloodstain, covering my hand. Then it went further.

"Huh," was all Sonder said as he watched.

Duran shook his head. "Well, you have to admit he get his point across."

Like some kind of invisible ink the red stain faded away, twisting and leaving patches as it did so. As I looked at the shape left behind I realised; this was the hand I'd used to grab the speaking-charm, back on the tram. The rest of the stain fell away, leaving the letters throbbing on my hand.

_OUT  
SIDE  
NOW_

Duran spoke for all three of us. "The arrogant sod."

Sonder stared down at my hand like a tourist admiring a view. "Unorthodox, certainly. Effective though."

"Also painful, jerk."

"Yes that too sorry," he added quickly.

"So now what, Elias?"

I hissed as the rest of the swelling faded away, leaving me with a clean but now aching palm. "We go outside like he asks. Then I hit him with this goddamn hand."

* * *

I didn't hit him, but I came damn close. He was barely bothering to hide as we walked outside the fire-warmed gates of the city and into the cold forest of the mountain. A flash of red in the treeline was all I needed. "What the hell was that supposed to be?"

"Apologies. A little joke. I needed you here."

"What, you thought that was _funny?"_

I could have been angrier, but something was wrong. Lightweave was different, and it wasn't just the clothes. He'd thrown off the filthy red robes from the city and Elwynn, and was now in something like Sara's leathers, old-looking but sturdy armour. His hands were still free though, for casting.

That wasn't the only change.

"My Gods Conray I was right, _I was right!"_

I could feel the reassuring bulk of Sonder and Duran behind me, both of them with their weapons not quite at the ready, but within a second of being swung around to face the elf. There was no other word to describe it, the man looked…elated. "Right about what?" I said, although in the back of my mind I almost knew what he meant. I let him talk.

"It's a war, Conray, a _war._ Scouts, pathfinders, an expedition but _something_ come down here from elsewhere, something new something we've never known before."

Duran got it already, Sonder was almost there. I felt something in my stomach heave. Wars meant armies. Armies meant soldiers. "Did you…"

Taelan Lightweave's eyes blazed green fire, wide-open like a pilgrim meeting his god. _"I spoke to her!"_ He looked past me as if seeing the Dwarf and Draeni for the first time. "Your confidences?"

"Yes," I said. The chill around the mountainside seemed to penetrate my thick jacket and steel armour and go into my bones, even though the wind wasn't even blowing. "What next? What happened?" I asked, and realised I desperately wanted to know.

The man got a hold on his enthusiasm, and while the green fire in those elvish eyes died down, it didn't go out entirely. "Better, Conray. Far better. Come with me. Now. Leave the city behind."

"I can't."

"Cogwrench is what we discussed. He will give us help and take the creature – the golem – to his labs. The end begins there. Come with me and we will find a better way, a way to destroy them without temptation." He turned without waiting for my reply, and began to walk off into the forest, sliding down the mountainside like he'd been born to the slopes. When he was almost out of sight, he turned back one final time, and shouted up to us.

"_Come now, or you will always wonder!"_

I didn't even need to look around at the other two. Duran would weigh his options and decide to turn his back would be a greater risk to our mission. He would go. Sonder would see this as divine chance and favour, and follow too. Without speaking I took a deep breath, and jumped down into the snow.

* * *

The elf smiled when e caught up, me and Sonder clanking and tired from running in even half-armour, and Duran simply stoic in thin chain. "I knew you'd come."

"Well, fuck you too." He didn't rise to the insult, and I looked around. We were deep in the forest of Dun Morogh, the county around Ironforge. Unlike Stormwind nothing lived here, the few Dwarvish and Gnomish towns choosing to sit beneath the mountain as if they could siphon off its heat for their own use. This place was pristine. "Where are we?"

The mage glanced back at us for only a second before pushing deeper into the woods. Snow tumbled from the branches as we strode after him, a blizzard all of our own. White covered our vision like we'd been punched in the head and were seeing stars. "The inner forest, beyond the city limits. She won't come any closer to the air from the mountain. Here!"

I pushed past a tree as I ran to catch up with Taelan trusting the others were behind me. I could feel the icy air stabbing me in the throat as I drew breathes as fast as my lungs could suck down the freezing air. Even at mid-day the trees blocked out the sun, rays coming through gaps in the treeline. It felt like being underwater.

"Here."

Couldn't tell whether it was Sonder or Duran or Taelan. I pushed on towards the sound of the voice. Everything else had gone quiet like the wildlife had suddenly vanished from the area and the only living things around me were my friends and that goddamn teasing Blood Elf bas-

The trees ended as suddenly as they had begun, my hand pushing past the last branch and finding only air in its way. I closed my eyes as I shoved past the final wall of greenery, out into the small clearing. I shielded my eyes from the sun beating down above, the light bouncing from the white snow like a mirror and blinding me. I could see Taelan ahead, just stood there against the next line of trees. I squinted against the glare, suddenly sick and tired of running through another forest on another wild chase for nothing. "So? _SO?!_

It took me a second to realise why he'd stopped.

And that the trees he was standing next to weren't trees.

Green eyes stared out at me from the forest.

"Finally"

_Finally._


	14. Emeralds

_It's a rite of passage for young children, especially outside of Stormwind where most people don't go. If you live in one of the outlying towns like Duskwood or Redridge, or any of the hundred small communities that don't have a name, you could go your whole life never meeting them._

_If you live in a city that isn't the case. Maybe you're the son of a diplomat, and whenever a foreign power comes to visit you get shoved into the same room as _the other _children while the parents talk politics and trade agreements, and suddenly you're looking across your expensive and precious and _safe_ home at other people who have weird skin colours and pointy ears, or hooves and horns. Maybe you're dirt poor and living out of Old Town, and to you those weird kids are just one more competitor in your daily life. Things you do without a second thought they repel from like you offered them snails as a snack, things you'd crawl away from rather than do they carry off without a complaint._

_No matter how it happens though, one day you simply realise:_

_There are other peoples in the world and they _are not like you.

* * *

"_What is the advantage the militia has over the guilds?"_

_I sat up as the old man's voice came in through the half-daze I was laying back in. I was exhausted from training, had really hoped to get away before the afternoon rush filled the courtyards with the heaving throng of guildmembers. But then Duran had asked us to stay behind after the lesson anyway. Nuts to that. "You asked us yesterday. We didn't know then and we don't know now."_

_The old dwarf smiled at me. "Well try to guess anyway laddie, we've got money ridin' on whether ye can figure it out."_

"_Is it that they don't have to deal with doddering old dwarves?" Erinys said, even more asleep than I was. They didn't let us use her family sword in training, but nothing else had been similar, so they'd ended up just typing a few iron ingots to a wooden oar. She said the balance was awful but the weight was more or less the same. Sometimes I wished I could swing a sword like that. Then I just had to look at how tired she was at the end of the day to forget the idea._

"_No, and watch your mouth."_

_I felt Sildri shift around under my arm as she talked, feel her warmth against my side. "Their experience?"_

_Duran smiled. Which meant his beard shifted a little bit. "Well at least one of ye's decided to take it seriously. No lass. Militia has higher turnover than the guilds. All that bad food I s'pose. But we're about the same when it comes to years."_

"_Can't be their training, weapons or armour," someone said. Probably one of the bowmen, smug bastards hardly did any work, just sat at the back and plinked away with those things…_

"_It ain't physical, and that's the only clue ye'll get from me."_

"_Will this be on our evaluation? Sorry, sorry."_

_I sighed. The sun was coming down to the walls and I was starving. "Alright, we give sir. None of us know, so put us out of our misery."_

_Duran looked around the other recruits and shrugged when he saw no-one else was going to answer. "It's their _expectations._"_

"_..." Me._

"_What?" Asshole rookie._

"_I don't get it." Sildri._

"_Oh, of course." Erinys._

_Duran smiled, or smirked. One of the two. "One of you has brains today it looks like. Well, inform your fellow rookies, Miss Heartfield."_

_She was blunt. "They know what they're going to be killing."_

_Duran looked a little off-put by the wording, but; "…Aye, you have the right of it. Listen up you kids."_

"_We're not kids-"_

"_Ye're kids to _me_. Militia know what they're fighting, know it's gonna be pretty much like they are. Two hands to grasp or grab with, two legs to run on, a suit of armour like they're wearing themselves and a weapon that looks like theirs. A militiaman sees an orc or a troll or a Defias traitor facing him down and knows, more'r less, what his opponent is_ capable of doing._"_

"_We don't have that?" I asked, listening hard now. I'd overheard the other instructors talking about Copperfield. He'd been out there, seen real battle. If he was going to throw out old war stories I wanted to hear them._

_It wasn't a war story, but it sounded like it had come from one. "When ye finally pass out of training you're gonna find yourself in bad places. There're things out there like nothing you've ever thought was possible to be a livin' thing Some of what I've killed fighting for the Old Man and the Irregulars didn't have weapons you could see. Some of them didn't even have arms to hold them with. Some of them had dozens, or had claws like steel or tentacles that'd choke the life from you and pop your head off your body like a cork from a bottle."_

"_Cheery thoughts. Comforting." The asshole again, sounding bored. I wondered how long he'd last out in the real world, where the blades were steel instead of wood, and the magic real fire and not pretty sparkles._

"_Aye you're laughing now you daft sods. In the guild, 'specially in _this_ guild, you have to throw out those expectations you've had. When you get out there you have to learn to be surprised at everything, expect everything you fight to do things you can't. Else one day you'll up against something new and you'll rush in like it's one more Tauren or gnoll or goblin, and whatever it is will rip your heart out and eat it."_

* * *

"I've been watching you."

"I…" I opened my mouth but no words came out. I had no idea what to say. None at all.

"Don't be afraid."

Taelan just stood aside and stayed quiet, like some kind of major-domo waiting on his master, as it (it?) spoke.

Predatory. That was the first word that came to mind, the reason the first thing I'd done when it came out through the trees was put my hand on my sword (and gods and the Light I wished I had a better sword than this cheap piece of metal), and _that_ was the reason it put its hand up and said what it did. This didn't help, not when the fingers on those hands all ended at the second knuckle, and turned into thick, sharp claws. Thinking back to that dark and smoky room charting the path of these things across the world – funny how your head works when it suddenly has no idea what to do – it was obvious why one's path had led it through only forests.

It was female, or at least to human eyes it looked female. In the cold Khaz Modan forests any other creature would have been shivering to death but something that could have been fur or grass covered its body in a fine down. Standing next to the elf I could see it was tall, maybe as tall as Erinys, and then looked even taller from the mane of sweeping hairs that ran down its back, some of them thick enough to be branches, leaves dotted through the whole mess. The body underneath the fur was close enough to human but if it used clothes it wasn't to cover anything. A woman's shape but smooth and featureless, like a child's doll with the clothes removed. The muscles were there, just visible underneath the grassy fur, but where the legs met there was nothing and the chest was more featureless curves. The similarity to human ended at the feet and hands though. The hands were those nasty-looking claws and the feet the same, with three forward-facing claws and a fourth that curved backwards and ended point-down in the floor, for balance.

The eyes stared out at me, waiting. Deep emerald irregular pupils that could have been starbursts, surrounded by a faint green glow. The mouth was set in a neutral- _what looked like_ a neutral expression, and I wondered if the teeth inside would be pointed. If it was a human it would have looked bored.

It wasn't anything I'd ever met before. Maybe not like anything _anyone_ had met before. Desperately I tried to remember what we'd been told about first contact with unfamiliar races but somehow I couldn't bring to mind any of it.

"Do you remember me?"

The words it spoke were halting, awkward, mispronounced. Like it had only seen Common written on paper but never spoken for it. I stared into those green starbursts and forced my tongue to work. "Yes. You saved us, in the forest." Taking a deep breath, I took my hand away from my sword. All it would need to do now was swipe once and…

The claws came down. It didn't make me feel any safer; the few feet between us could be covered in a single leap. But it was a start. "I did," it replied.

I tried to ask _who are you_ but another word came out instead, one I didn't realise I'd been thinking on until I asked it. "Why?"

It blinked, and cocked its head like a bird. "I should not have?" Was it my imagination working overdrive, playing tricks on me, or did the voice sound just a little softer?

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Taelan looking at me strangely, but I ignored him. If this had answers, I wanted them. "I…no. Who are you?" Finally, there it was.

It stared away into the air over my shoulder and I could tell it was thinking. Then it did something I wasn't expecting. It stepped forward, claws making soft voices as it walked across the snow-covered ground to me, and extended a hand. It took me a second to realise it was holding it out for me to shake it.

"I am..."

* * *

"_You must be kidding. A paladin?"_

"_You act so shocked!"_

"_Aren't paladins supposed to be kind all sensitive and gentle and stuff like that?"_

"_And?"_

"_And I've known you for all of ten days and even I can tell you aren't any of those."_

"_Takes all kinds to be paladins laddie. Just because a man serves the Light doesn't mean he's made of it."_

"_See? Our captain agrees. I- ah, someone else comes. Welcome!"_

"_Hello. Sorry sir but have you seen- Oh, Elias, good. Commander was looking for us, he needs a team to mop up the remnants. I'll have to borrow him captain and…I remember seeing you in the battle, you did good work.I didn't catch your name though…?"_

"_Sonder."_

"_He's a paladin."_

"…_You're kidding?"_

* * *

Later on I thought back and figured out what must have happened.

When we'd gotten split up in the woods they'd followed my trail, and when they heard talking Sonder had hunkered down far out of sight while Duran had crept closer to see what was happening. From whatever foxhole he'd found he'd watched through the waving trees at us talking, and when the thing had stepped forward towards me, claws out and my sword useless by my side, he'd chosen the lesser of two evils. Gods bless him.

The clawed hand twitched as it reached out to me and suddenly the thing wasn't there anymore. A puff of snow on the ground in front of me as the thing practically _slid_ backwards across the soft ground, and I could have swore I could see the bullet go by me, the leg it had been aiming for no longer there. I tried to raise a hand and saw Taelan doing the same as we both had the same thought ; _wait!_ But it was no good as something blue and silver burst from the trees, hands already swinging around.

"_ELIAS, TO ARMS!"_

The Hammer that Sonder carried around was simple; a long and solid steel haft, elaborately carved, and on one end a giant purple crystal hard enough to splinter oak and crush metal where it struck, and Sonder swung it now with everything he had, into the side of the green woman/spirit/whatever he'd seen.

Green eyes opened wide – _it can panic – _and it tried to shift around, still in mid-step from Duran's bullet, but it was too late, and Sonder had chosen his moment and aim perfectly. The weapon's head clipped across her side where a humans ribs would be, and it stumbled in the snow.

"_NO!"_

"_WAIT!"_

I didn't know whether it was me or Taelan shouting but I stepped forward as Sonder stepped forward again, the weight of his hammer making him spin around like a giant steel-coated whirlwind, hammer mace coming around for a second blow at my 'attacker', who had been forced down onto their knees by the first blow and was trying to get up.

I body-checked Sonder as hard as I could and heard an _oof_ of expelled air and surprised as he lost his balance. Instead of smashing into the centre of the creature's torso, shattering whatever bones and organs were inside, it slammed into the ground beside, hard enough to send snow and grass and turf sailing through the air. I could hear my ears ringing as I picked myself up from the ground as quickly as I could.

"_GODSDAMN WAIT ALREADY!"_

It was me this time. I had one hand on Sonder' shoulder and was looking in the direction Duran's bullet had come from, just hoping my old captain had a cooler head than Sonder did. I glanced aside to see Taelan helping the thing up, claws scraping across the ground where it walked. It was flashing glances between me and Sonder. "This is a misunderstanding," I said. It sounded lame even for an excuse, but it was the best we had. I looked up at Taelan. "You brought us out here so we could talk, right?"

The elf's eyes flashed. Green just like the creature's, but the same strange light in them all Blood Elves seemed to have. He was angry. "To _talk_ yes, but if your idiotic foot-soldiers can't control themselves then-"

I cut him off. "Good. Then let's talk." I looked at the creature. "Let's just talk."

* * *

Sonder had the decency to look embarrassed. Clearly he remembered his training much better than I did. He went down on one knee and started talking before any of us could get in first. Taelan looked down with something between amusement and scorn. Duran – who had walked out of the trees nowhere near the direction I had thought he was in, of course – rolled his eyes and waited.

"Forgive us. We had only concern for our comrade in mind. Our customs may be different from your own but we meant no harm. If you-"

"Forgiven." It looked over at Duran, who was still just a little bit away from the rest of us. Sonder just looked off-put his speech had been derailed.

The dwarf shifted his feet around in the snow as if trying to get comfortable, and lit his pipe. "And may we ask who _you _are lass? You've met our…" he glanced at Taelan "_companion_ here. Seems you've arranged this little meeting for a reason."

"Understandable caution." The word seemed strange coming from that mouth, and I got a glance of fangs inside an otherwise normal set of teeth. "My name is hard to translate. We do not use words exactly for names, we use concepts, descriptions of our purpose. I travel in search of something, across great distance and through danger, so that is my name. I know your language has an ideal that is similar. Saga. Call me Saga."

"And what can the Alliance do for you, my lady?" Sonder asked as he came to his feet. He held his hammer with the head planted into the snowy earth, but occasionally her eyes gave it quick glances, and one of those clawed hands sometimes drifted off to her right flank where the massive crystalline thing had clipped her. If it hurt though she wasn't letting it show.

_So she's graduated from an 'it' already then?_

"I was sent on a mission. To find and…remove…some things that should not be here." When she spoke in more than one-word answers it came clear through in her voice, that strange rich accent that I couldn't place, words said strangely from never having been heard. Whatever else she was, she wasn't from the Eastern Kingdoms, or Kalimdor. Somewhere out there was a land of people we'd never seen before, and we were the first to meet them. I shivered a little, and I knew it wasn't the cold. The same thing had happened with the Draeni when they had arrived on Azeroth. But not every meeting ended up in handshakes and new friends.

"A hunt," I said. Her eyes met mine. Not the crazed pulsing green from the creature killed in the forests of Elwynn. But still green. "The thing that you saved us from back in Elwy- to the south? You've been sent to kill them?"

"Yes."

I felt something then, in my chest. It felt like deep, deep relief. I'd promised and been paid to hunt and kill these things, and the first, the _first one_ we had found had nearly gutted me instead. Somewhere inside me, maybe in that fogged-off past of my head I couldn't see into, I hadn't wanted to find another one. Had just wanted to forget the promises I'd made the shadowed council of rulers and forget the promises I'd made to my old friends I had dragged back into the line of fire. Now here was something that had already killed one and was saying it was _on my side._

I was relieved.

"What are they?" Duren asked, all business. He was puffing on his foul-smelling pipe and gesturing with one hand, but I could see the other hand still gripped around his rifle, finger on the trigger. He wasn't totally convinced.

The thing that called itself Saga looked over at him. "They are machines created for menial labour, designed to follow orders. Constructs designed to go to places their masters cannot."

"Constructs designed to disguise themselves as others and kill?" Duran asked, whip-quick.

The face changed. Not a little but it was there. Either it was just naturally deadpan or it was learning to make itself understood as it went. "Their masters designed them to be form-changing, to carry out orders that might need different shapes. As for the killing…I know of it."

The Archmage. The Colonel of the Stormwind Guard and his dead lieutenants. A civilian family just sitting down to eat when they were butchered. "You _know of it_?" I asked, and could feel my voice straining at the words.

She looked directly at me. "If I could have arrived sooner, I would have," she said, and I knew we were both thinking of that dead family.

"Why have you called us here?" Duran asked. He looked over at me. "Elias, I don't think we can-"

He was cut off as Taelan Lightweave spoke up. Quiet until now, just watching us from beneath one of the snow-laden trees, I had almost forgotten he was there. Now he stepped forward, just as animated as when he had grabbed me in Ironforge and dragged me out here into the darkening woods. I swear I spend too much time in places like this. "Don't you see!" He sounded excited, more alive than he had when he had first met us in Stormwind. I didn't know how old he was – how old is middle-aged for a Blood Elf? – but he seemed younger as he talked, as young as Sildri. "They're here to help! With this we can annihilate these…these constructs! Remove the threat, remove the _temptation!_"

I looked from him to her. She stared back impassively with those strange emerald eyes. I had questions. Duran probably had so many questions we'd spend the rest of the night asking. Sonder seemed perfectly happy letting us deal with the hard work so long as eventually it all worked out fine. His outburst over, Taelan seemed to have settled back down to something approaching that old Elf laconic arrogance. "Will you?" I asked. "Help?"

She just nodded. That gesture, at least, came easily enough. "I will."

I saw Duran let out a slow breath, and knew he had been having the same doubt and worry that I'd been having earlier. His hand eased off the trigger of his rifle, and I knew that something in the conversation had finally convinced him. Sonder picked up his hammer and slung it back over his shoulder.

"Then if we're allies we have some work to do," I said. The gaze swung back to me. "We need to know everything you know."

"That…could take some time," she said, and I heard it again, that softer lilt of humour or amusement. I wondered whether she was just talking about the Constructs we were facing, or something more. "But anything I know is yours, Cz Conray."

The word came out strange from her mouth, like the _sir _of a knight. I wondered what it meant, but I could wonder some more tomorrow. I felt tired. All through the strange meeting I'd been on-edge, the guild-trained part of me having never let its guard down for even a second. I wanted to be back inside, inside Ironforge the warmth of the fires there that never went out. "Call me Elias," I said. I gestured at my friends. "This is Duran Copperweight, and Sonder Kolram."

"Lady."

"Charmed."

She nodded to them both. _Now what?_ I wondered. I had expected a hunt and a fight and for this to be over, everyone sent home with a reward and a pat on the back from SI:7. I'd tracked non-humans before, had expected this to be a little harder but still something I could do easily. I'd forgotten what Duran had told me all those years ago when I had been a trainee and he my squad-captain. When the shadow-council had offered me whatever I wanted in exchange for taking this mission, they had hit the mark better than they could ever have known.

_Gods,_ I thought, _what am I going to tell Vickers?_

"Everyone else needs to know," I said out loud, and saw nods from Sonder and Duran. I turned to Saga. "Our group is split up, we need to-"

I stopped as a hand swept across her, and she cut me off before I could finish my sentence. "You should not be. They are coming here," she said.

I stopped dead, thought for a second I had mis-heard her. "Who?"

"The other constructs that we seek. They know they are being hunted."

_By the light…_ I heard Sonder whispering under his breath. I knew exactly what she meant, even if she didn't say it. "They're coming here _after you._"

Emerald eyes stared into mine, and when she spoke the voice wasn't soft at all. "And you. Your masters. The ones who gave you orders. They will tease it from you if they have to. Everything that is a threat to their existence they will kill, and then when everyone who knows of them is dead they will set about killing the rest, in darkness and silence."

I remembered an old memory, a time long gone. Sitting in the cool grass decades ago in training, laying back and relaxing with the other recruits-in-training of the Irregulars and talking about the training they had us doing, about whether our instructors were harsh or not, about nothing at all. A less on scouting one of the rogues, dead year ago from some brushfire war with the Horde, had told us about as he ate.

_You have two options if you're being hunted. You can run so fast they can't keep up, escape that way and come back again later. Or you can stop being hunted by stopping your hunters._

_The Archmage. The Colonel. _The farmyard slaughterhouse that had drawn me in, alone, when I split from the rest of the group. Not just a slaughterhouse, _an ambush._ They knew we were after them. But they weren't running or hiding from us at all.

They were coming to kill us first.

"What do we do?" I asked, before I could think of anything else. There was something else in what she said had, but I couldn't quite place it. I was drunk and worried on too much information all at once. My head felt like it was going to burst with what I knew. All I could think of was names and faces, and now what might happen to them if I fucked up. It wasn't just me and Sara and Duran and Erinys and the rest now. It was everyone I knew and had talked to since this whole thing began.

That was a lot of people.

"We have to get them. _We have to get them._"

I was the one who had spoken, and I saw Duran and Sonder nodding as I said it. Saga stared into my eyes, and for a second I saw something past them, just like I'd seen terror and madness in the construct we had killed. There was an endless distance in those eyes, like nothing else I'd ever seen. Wherever this creat- this _person_ had come from, it was a long way away, farther than I'd ever go. I wondered what she'd seen, on the way from that place to here.

After a second of that gaze I had to break it, and she nodded too, and spoke.

"Yes. You must kill. Or everyone you know will die."


	15. Cold Molten Assault

"This is fucked up, Elias."

"You don't have to tell _me_ that."

They'd gotten back as fast as they could. Since old times, when the Goblins and Gnomes hadn't been on quite such bad terms, there had been a teleporter that led from the Goblin port town of Booty Bay to the old Gnomish capital of Gnomeregan. I don't know what deals Aaron had made to let Alliance personnel use it but it can't have been cheap. We'd met the same night in an old hall, on the outskirts of Ironforge and long abandoned to the wind and rain, and the reactions had been a thing to see. I'd stood by and watched as everyone had come in – the women grumbling from being dragged across the continent – and saw the thing we'd met in the forest standing there with us. Sara had jumped and almost went for her daggers. Erinys had stopped at the door and just stared, before taking a place at the other side of the room. Sildri had flinched, then just bowed and introduced herself with a smile. Then she'd walked over to me and punched me in the arm._ But at least we got a few days' holiday out of it,_ was all she'd said about being thrown around the continent like a yo-yo.

Vickers response had been…different. I still didn't know what to make of it but somehow I got the impression he was barely surprised.

"Are we even sure this thing is on the level?" Erinys looked askance at Vickers, her blade point-down and twirling it like a drill. She was a little nervous, even if she'd never admit it.

"I'm fair certain on it," Aaron replied, not tearing his eyes away from the binoculars he was staring out of.

"How certain is that? Are you _really_ certain?" she teased.

"Just keep watch out and try not to let us get killed." There'd been something wound-up about the man since he'd met Saga. He was more jumpy, irritable. Back in Stormwind he'd been more laid back, now it seemed like he was double-checking everything we did and jumping at shadows.

Well, at least one of the reasons why was obvious.

It didn't speak. It just stood there behind us, following mutely and staring at us with blank grey eyes when we tried to talk to it. Anyone watching would think we were trying to talk with an idiot, but that wasn't it. There was nothing behind those eyes, at least nothing that had a soul. It looked and dressed like a normal human but the only thing that went through its head was metal gears and cogs, and whatever instructions Saga fed to it. I hadn't even bothered to ask how the thing worked but whatever they were she could see through them, and talk through it to. Them.

_I have several. They are perfectly safe,_ Saga said had when we were looking at them in the old hall. I wasn't so goddamn sure. I'd had one bad encounter with the corrupted construct back in Stormwind, I didn't want to be constantly checking my back in case this one tried the same. It- she'd just shook her head, that strange mane of green leafy hair shaking behind her. _Mine are pure, untouched. They will be useful._

Aaron's eyes had lit up, and that was how we were here now.

SCENE BREAK

"_That is incredibly dangerous," Sara had said when Aaron had outlined what he was thinking._

_The spy shrugged. "If you have a better idea I'm all hears Ms Whitgens."_

_Sara had shifted under his stare. "The guild always taught us to protect, not put at risk. I don't know how I feel about this." She got nods from Sonder and Sildri, both of whom looked like they had similar problems._

_Aaron was unyielding, but reasonable. "More dangerous than letting these things run free? Don't get me wrong I dislike it too, but this way we can focus on defending _one_ target, and not dozens. We're down an Archmage and a guard-commander already, I don't want to wake up and hear we're down a lord too, or a spymaster. Or a king."_

_I caught Erinys' eye and saw a glint there. _Might not be such a bad thing,_ is what it said. I waved a finger at her; _keep your mouth shut.

"_Aye, we understand lad. So who's to be the unfortunate bait?" Duran asked._

_Aaron didn't seem to mind being called 'lad' so much. "There's going to be a parade in a few days, celebrating the Human-Dwarf relationship. The new Lord-Justice of Stormwind and his retinue will be meeting with the King of Ironforge afterwards, to discuss military actions against foreign aggressors."_

"_There is?" I asked._

_He grinned back. "There will be when I get back home and arrange it. He'll be talking about making squads to hunt down invaders."_

"_You sneaky git."_

"_Sue me. We'll make it known in the cities that it's happening. Big feast, key to the city, the whole thing. So big you can't help but hear about it. And we'll make sure people know which way we're coming, too." He turned. "If we set up our poor lord to be the one pulling the strings behind our little squad, would these corrupted constructs you're hunting be smart enough to join the dots and see a fat juicy chance to get him?"_

_Saga stood up against the wall, hands crossed across her chest. "They are."_

"_And what happens if they do take our bait and your tame lord gets gutted in the street?"_

"_Well god Erinys, if only we had a military unit in the area to kill the thing first."_

"_Point taken."_

* * *

"Cz Conray."

I turned to the construct. Even though the voice was male I knew it her speaking. "What's up?"

Grey eyes stared into mine. When the construct spoke the words were delayed half a second. It was unnerving. "They have arrived."

I didn't really need her to tell me that. I could hear the cheering, a roar that bounded through the underground city echoing from the walls. "That'll be the king."

"Aye well, with respect I doubt your Lord-Justice is a hero to the common people," Duren said, not a little smug.

_No._ I thought back years to the single meeting I'd had with the old Lord-Justice. _No, he is not._ I checked my sword was strapped to my side, and the room was silent for a second, the only noises the soft clinks and shifting of metal and leather as Duren and Erinys checked their armour. Not for the first time I wished I was back in my old Guild gear, but hard luck. "We ready?"

Erinys sheathed her blade on her back. It nearly touched the ground. "Ready."

A clink of bullets locking into place. "Ready," said Duran.

I glanced at the construct our new ally was seeing through. It nodded, and when it said "Ready," I knew it was speaking for everyone else, in the team on the other side of the city. Humans and elves and even a Blood Elf with the proper badge of allowance could move through Ironforge without drawing a glance, but even the blindest and oldest Dwarf would notice Saga. Anyone looking up into the cornices and stonework of the city's upper levels might, if they were very observant and lucky, spot a new shadow among the other stone gargoyles that decorated the city. Saga was our link, and our final attack if the seven us working together still couldn't bring down the murderous man-shaped device.

_Will it listen to reason? _I had asked when Aaron had left to contact his network of shadows and government stooges to arrange the plan. The answer had been simple:

_No._

All ready, all prepared. I felt tense, on-edge. I felt it at the start of every mission. The final second when you're walking into danger but you haven't quite put your foot down yet. I'd never turned around yet. Didn't intend to start today. I took a deep breath. "Then let's move out, Irregulars.

"Yes _sir."_

* * *

"What am I looking for, Saga?"

Aaron had really pulled out all the stops I'd give him that. It was practically a parade, in the slow and sombre way that Dwarves liked to play their parades. Somewhere in the distance, almost past the curve of the buildings that made up the circular main thoroughfare of Ironforge, I could see the glinting light reflecting from the armour of the Dwarven king. I smiled when next to him I saw the taller but much more plainly-dressed figure of the Stormwind noble, waving awkwardly and not quite sure what the hell was going on. My humour was tempered by the thought that one of the throng in the crowd all around me was something intent on doing the poor bastard extreme harm.

"Look up," the construct said. I did so, and from up – way up – in the ornate scrolling and decoration of the buildings built into the mountain, a pair of emerald eyes looked down at me, and a clawed hand waved. "There has been no sign yet," Saga said through her machine. "But I will know, when I see him."

"So it's just you and me for now then?" I asked, resisting the urge to shout. Whatever it had in its ears worked supernaturally well.

"For the moment."

"Then let's talk," I said, half my brain scanning the crowd – Light knew why, I didn't even know what I was looking for – while the other was thinking. My fingered tapped idly on my sword-scabbard and I had to will them to stop. I'd never liked the waiting, the anticipation. Sara and Duran were the experts on stealth and surveillance. I got antsy waiting for a lunch order.

"About what, Cz Conray?" Saga replied.

"Just call me Elias already."

"About what, Elias?"

"About what it is you're hiding from us." I stopped, waited to see how she would reply. Whether she would lie or cover or…

"What do you think I'm hiding from you, Elias?" the doll said into my ear, as around us the crowd jostled and bumped to get closer to the action. A couple of times the wave parted for long enough to let me see Aaron or Erinys glancing around, but we didn't try to get each other's attention. We had bigger problems.

"Hiding other people like you," I said, throwing out my best shot. When nothing but silence came from the doll, I knew I'd hit my mark. I smiled. "I was thinking about it last night and I thought it sounded weird, what you told me in that forest. You called these things-" I smacked the construct on the chest. "-machines for menial labour. You talked about masters and servants. So if this guy here belongs to you, _who the hell do the ones we're hunting belong to?"_

There was a minute there, where nothing came from the soulless doll beside me. For a moment I wondered with a shiver if that was it, if I'd gone too far and even now Saga was leaping off into the distance. If…

"Have you informed your comrades?" Saga said finally.

I breathed a sigh of relief and talked back. "No, but I'm working off more information." I remembered who else had been there in the clearing with me that day. Sonder would trust me and the others to know what we were doing, but Duran… "In fact one of them may already suspect." I paused. "Am I right?"

"…You are."

"The constructs we're hunting are being controlled? Directed?" I asked.

"Yes."

"By someone like you?" By something that had taken apart that screaming spitting construct in Elwynn like it was paper-machine. Suddenly the relief I'd felt at having something as dangerous as Saga on our side was sunk thinking we'd be fighting one as well-

"You are close, Cz Conray. It- Wait, pronouns. _He_ is the same in some ways, but not as you think. As a Draeni to you as he is to me."

A catechism I was taught growing up, when parents wanted their children to understand the other races in the Alliance. "_Different shapes, same thoughts?_"

"The same thoughts once, but no longer," Saga said, and although the construct's voice was emotionless I thought there was something in those words. "You have nothing to fear from him today," she went on. "He would have more difficulty than I infiltrating any of your cities."

_Well thank the Light for small mercies._ I wondered what 'he' would have to be like, to be stranger than the predatory thing hidden in the buildings above.

"Cz C- Elias?"

"Yes?" I asked.

"I am sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

"My situation is…complex. Precarious. I am conflicted."

Something clicked. "Was he a friend of yours?" I asked.

"A dear friend, for a long time." This time I knew I wasn't imagining it. I wondered how she was feeling up there, if the voice of the machine could convey it. "Now I have no…wait."

I could hear _that_ in the voice too. "What?"

There was a silence that seemed deafening, even in the noise and fury of the crowd around us. Then:

"Our quarry approaches."

* * *

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"I am. It is the one. There is nothing in its heart."

Just one more human watching the parade from the side-lines as it went past the housing areas. This close to the carriage the noise was a wave that crashed over me and seemed to vibrate from my armour. The honour guard marched past me and then I saw him, up on the carriage with the King, still looking nervous. The unlucky bait for the operation waved occasionally, in stark contrast to the King beside him who was vigorously pumping his fist and shouting in Dwarfish to his people to great and loud effect. The human pointed out to me just looked bored by the whole process. "Tell Sildri and the other team!" I said to the construct, shouting for it to hear me over the crowd. "They have to get around the crowd and bracket it from the other side to-"

"_Elias!"_

I realised my mistake far too late. The human's head jerked around fast, too fast for a human, and suddenly it was looking in our direction. No, looking _directly at me_ and I realised it had heard me.

_You idiot moron!_

I caught it for a second, the crowd around it thrown away as it leapt from the balcony it was standing on and down into the crowd. More cries as the dwarves under it collapsed with unexpected weight of the thing, and then it was shoving a path through them, out past the crowd and into the inner city.

It was gone.

I could have kicked myself. Why did I assume the thing didn't have the same abilities as the one _directly beside me Saga had already told me about!_ "Fuck! _Fuck!_" I turned and shoved an unlucky Dwarf out of the way. I cupped my hands and filled my lungs, shouted as loud as I could over the crowd. "_ERINYS!"_

Erinys had no problem seeing over the crowd. She body-checked a dwarf out of the way and ignored a dirty look as she practically slid to a stop beside me. Her eyes gleamed. "Here!"

I spoke fast. "It's gone, I screwed it up. Human male, brown clothes, five-ten, average," She listened like a scribe as I talked fast. "Scout it down, don't engage unless you absolutely have to." I turned to the construct. "Tell Sildri and Aaron to get on the gate in case it tries to escape.

"Doing. Wait. Done." The voice was oddly comforting.

"Laddie?"

I looked slightly down to see Duran staring at me. "Sorry old man."

"Recriminations later, first the hunt," the Dwarf said.

We pushed through the crowd until we hit its borders. The push and throng vanished and we were out, with the huge carved tunnels before us leading into the interior of the city. The industry and workshops, even this far away glowing molten-red with the heat of the forges and lava-flow. This wasn't going to be fun.

It never was.

* * *

We walked through a dim world filled with chains and metal, clockwork and hug steel contraptions made to twist and shape molten iron and steel. My sword and shield were already out, and beside me Duran had his rifle ready to fire. I could hear every sound around, the pings of cooling metal making me twitch, every breath of hot air that came from the grates and channels far below as the lava from the mountains heart was formed and guided and fed into the inner city to provide heat and power and light for the Dwarf's never-ending works. We'd been here for less than an hour and already I was sweating as Duran and I and Saga's construct crept through the almost-empty halls and buildings. We were alone, almost.

_We're good,_ Aaron had said through the construct after he had gotten my message. _Gates are locked, sewers too. Dwarf and Gnome guards at every hall leading out. Inner city is locked and bolted, it's going nowhere. On our way now. Don't get murdered._

Amazing advice Aaron, thanks a goddamn ton.

"Elias. Cz Copperweight."

Chains clinked above me and I looked up as she swung down, all long powerful limbs and sharp claws as Saga touched down with a _crunch_ of cracking stone beneath those long talons. The construct beside me suddenly stopped, then walked sideways to the nearest wall and sat down. It closed its eyes and didn't' move.

"Won't we want that?" Duran asked.

"It is not a combat model," Saga answered him, and that was that. She looked out of place, an emerald spectre in a red world. "Cz Vickers and the others are close, moving counter to ourselves. We will meet in the middle of this city, if we do not meet it first."

I was still looking around the forgeworks. Chains hanging from everywhere, metal-shaping machines and benches. Out of the long corridors it was impossible to see more than a few metres below something blocked my vision. My armour felt hot and the breath dry in my throat.

And something else, under that. Trying to rise out from somewhere in the fog where my old memories had been.

_Long corridors and dry air. Not dry from heat, dry from cold. Endless cold and nothing else. Do you remember?_

"Are you alright, Elias?"

I realised both of them were staring at me, Saga's emerald eyes from above and Duran's brown irises from below. "Just a little tired," I said. I tried to change the subject, push back that _thing_ back into the fog it had come from. No time to wallow now.

"Our prey is trapped. If you are feeling unwell we can pauseppzzz/zgzh|][}{gz/z.,zlzk,zzkz,-

"Lass!?" Duran asked in alarm as suddenly Saga's voice dissolved from soft tones into something hissing and spitting and utterly inhuman. Her pupils shuddered and blinked.

As soon as it had started it ended, and looked down at the Dwarf in surprise. "My doll is unmade."

_Oh fuck._ The other construct. The other team.

_Sildri._

I grabbed her. "_Where?!"_

* * *

We heard it before we saw it.

"_FUCK YOU AND DIE!"_

Erinys' blade crashed into the ground where a millisecond before the thing had been standing. A long hand reached out, reached farther than a human hand should have, but already she was using the bounce and momentum and swinging it back for another shot as she shouted at the thing. It danced backward in a jerky stop-motion dance and Erinys' swing sliced through air. The human – no, the construct – was leaking _something_ from a half dozen places and smoking green light into the air from its body. I could see something slumped against the wall covered in blood and prayed to the Light and all gods it wasn't one of my friends, but there was no time. I stopped thinking and started fighting.

"_Here!"_

A half-second and a glance, a distraction was all I needed. It looked over at me as I shouted and leapt, shield already up. I heard metal scraping on the other side of it and saw light as claws scraped and gouged through the steel – _through the steel!_ – of the buckler. I brought my blade overhead and my arm felt it was almost jerked off as it drew back, rending my defence as it did so. Suddenly the three of us were in a triangle, Erinys and I standing at two points and the thing at the third.

"Slowing down, Elias?" she hissed at me, blade drawn back and ready to swing. I moved closer, covering her undefended side. Just like old times. It felt good, felt _right._

"Never. _Saga!"_

The thing's head jerked sideways like a bird and an eye rolled crazily to stare sideways. It – or the thing guiding it – got only a glance of green, and then suddenly it was thrown sideways, the arm it had brought up torn and crushed as Saga kicked out on the way down from the chains above. Erinys was already moving and swinging, and would have cut the thing in two if an arm hadn't grabbed the ground, sending up chunsk of concrete, and swung back onto its. I was already moving back as the thing jumped at Erinys, recovering from her swing and lining up another, and its arm hit my shield, tearing out more ribbons of steel. God I wished I'd been able to get Tired work before we came here. Erinys planted two feet in the ground and swung as hard as she could, the same time I let go of my shield. Not expected it, the thing slipped backward as suddenly there was no resistance, and her sword slammed into it hard enough to send it sideways, and down a flight of stairs. There was a massive crash and a twist of screaming boiling metal as the corrupted construct crashed into a workshop.

We had a minute. "Where are the others?"

"Split up," Erinys said. She tipped her head at the bloody shape I had noticed on the way in to the workshop. "Sildri found a loiterer, too late." Poor bastard. "Checked for help. Vickers noticed it hiding in the shadows, too late."

My stomach fell. "Are they alright?"

She laughed, not taking her eyes from the pile of metal the thing had landed in. "Tiny slash, nothing else. Patching herself up already, I told Vickers to look after her. Then I chased."

"One day that's going to get you killed." But I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Break's over," Duran's voice came from behind me.

It rose, and there it was again. Twisted and holed from half a dozen places in its torso and leaking something foul and smoking from a long gnash on its face, the construct stood shaking and facing us, all green fire and low hissing voice. I heard a sigh from Saga behind me but ignored it as one step at a time it moved towards us.

There was a bang like firecrackers, and suddenly it was sprawling as one leg puckered and collapsed as Duran's bullets tore through whatever the thing had for knees. He was already reloading as the thing stood again, but…

"It's changing. A desperate attack."

Skin split apart to reveal the steel beneath and long twisting knives burst from the chest and arms and head. The ruined leg smoked and sizzled and dropped, severed, to the ground as something that could have been a pipe or a tentacle snaked from the wound. There was nothing human left of the thing now, just a green-and-grey three-legged mess of steel, the tentacle whipping behind and above it. Barbs and sharp hooks jutted at every inch from the thing as it writhed like a scorpion's tail.

_It's protecting itself from attacks from above._ It wouldn't be so easy this time. "Now what!?"

Duran shot it once, almost leisurely as it shook and righted itself. The bullet didn't have any obvious effect. "Interesting," the Dwarf muttered a she backed up.

I had my shield up in front of me, Erinys blade already drawn back, but I had no idea what to do as the tailed seemed to grow as we watched. It whipped side to side, ruining equipment with massive blows from the thing and leaving smoking green trails in its wake. Pale liquid pooled and hissed on the ground as it shook and the noises that came from what might have been the head or might be something new entirely sounded like nothing else I'd heard, even back in Elwynn.

"It cannot sustain such growth," Saga said, claws out in front and tensed, but even she didn't want to get too close to that ruinous tail. "It is desperate. It will take us with it."

Like it had just been waiting for the queue, the rotten and corrupted construct leapt. I threw my useless shield at it and the tail whipped fast as lightning to smash it to the ground. I felt something hot pass by my cheek and rolled aside as fast as I could. A green blur in the corner of my eye leapt onto the thing as it landed, but the tail just came around again and Saga danced backward before the thing could cleave her in two.

* * *

I wondered if somewhere out there the being giving it orders was watching through its eyes and seeing us. I wondered what it would be thinking in a few minutes. We stood panting in the corridor, angry screams coming from the distance. Saga had gone to find Sonder and the others, leaving me alone with my old teacher in his hometown's twisting maze of metal and stone.

Which had given me the idea.

_Duran_

_Elias?_

_Where's the closest open forge?_

…_Why, not far at all._

_Go get ready._

We heard it coming, a snarling and hissing mess that shambled down the corridors and buildings of Ironforge's heart, smashing equipment and bending steel with that massive tail as it went. I didn't like to think what something like that could do if it got out of here and into the rest of the city.

Luckily, that wasn't going to be a problem.

"_HERE!"_

It spun in ways that would have broken a human's bones, one green eye staring directly at me. For a second I had the urge to just turn and run, but somehow I managed to hold my ground as green light spewed from its mouth as a low roar came from the thing. Then it was on me.

_Gods, be fast._

They were. There was a second, maybe more, when there was nothing between me and the construct but hot open air and I could see those blades and strange steel _things_ bearing down on me. Then I felt the rush of air past my face, and felt an incredible satisfaction as the giant steel beam swung across the air in front of me like a sword. I heard the laugh from above me (_"Hah HAH!")_ as Sonder pushed the lever with every inch of force he could, and the beam slammed into the creature with a rent of metal and flesh that sprayed dripping ooze and metal shards across half he wall, floor and ceiling behind us.

"Well, that was disappointing," Erinys' voice said from behind me, as she walked up and we both stared at what was left of the-

It wasn't dead. Its torso crushed to a thin paste, the massive tail twitching and convulsing in a dozen places on the ground and it _still wasn't dead. _I didn't move, just watched in amazement as the thing dragged itself forward, steel blades hooked into the ground below it as it slowly dragged itself towards us, a shapeless mass of hissing hatred and corruption. I felt sick just watching it.

"Just get it over with," I said.

We stepped back as the heat ratcheted up another level. The workshop was everything Duran had promised me, as the huge obsidian funnel swung around on oiled bearings, and the lava flowed out. I turned away as the heat assaulted my face and the thing's hissing turned to screeching as molten red met the green, and the lower torso dissolved in the blood of Ironforge as it flowed into the channels in the room that the massive hammer had thrown the construct into.

"Good riddance," Duran said, and spat. A cinder landed in his beard, and he swatted it away idly as he turned to Saga. "So that's two of your prey down lass. What else would you-"

He stopped and looked around, and it took me a second to figure out why. The lava had stopped.

"What the hell are you doing Sonder!"

On the catwalk above me the Draeni just shrugged, and then pointed.

"Oh, shit," I said under my breath.

* * *

Saga was gone before I could even blink. I could hear the clanking of chains and rope above me, and stared straight down in case I gave her away. If she didn't want to be discovered, especially by this person, I didn't particularly blame her.

"Outstanding job men."

Diley Cogwrench clapped and smiled as he walked in. I shot a glance over at Sonder as he stood behind the gnome but the Draeni just shrugged again; _what can you do?_

A pair of eyes, one glass, turned up to look at me. "Well _done_ Captain, well done! This is more than we could have possibly hoped for!" He looked around the room. Duran had already stood down, as had Erinys. Still no sign of Sildri or Sara. Or Taelan, come to that.

Somehow I felt the whole thing slipping away from me. "You got here very fast sir. If I could ask, how-"

Cogwrench just waved a hand at me, eyes glued to the remains of the construct that still smoked and sputtered as the metal cooled around it. "Details, details. I will admit at the start of this little conspiracy I may have doubted in all this nonsense, but here it is!" He reached into his robe as he approached the wreckage, bringing out a small metal stick. idly he poked the remains with it. "Delivered safely and alive!"

What?_ What?_

I turned and looked and saw he was right. The light had faded but it was still there, a green pulse deep in the heart of the thing, what could have been an eye somewhere in the twisted mass of flesh and metal staring out at us. I stepped forward. "Sir, you shouldn't-!" Suddenly I was cut off as the Dwarven guides were between me and him. The ague feeling of unease I'd had since the Gnome had walked in was now front and centre of my mind, and I knew why. "We have to finish it off, it's dangerous to-"

"No, no I don't think so. It looks harmless enough to me." The voice was calm and friendly but the eyes were fixed on the thing. I recognised the look on the Gnome's face, and shivered. "You've done an admirable job captain. The Alliance will take it from here."

God, that was just what I wanted to hear. I caught Erinys' glance and saw the worry there. She looked as tense as I felt. A few minutes ago I'd felt elation we'd managed to pull this off, even in spite of my own massive fuck-up. Now suddenly I felt a deep fear staring at Diley Cogwrench, as he in turn stared down at the nearly-dead creature with something like care on his face.

I watched as the workshop was suddenly all action and movement. Dwarves were dragooned into service and in minutes there was something between a harnass and a cage laying around the torso of the thing, and Dwarves and Gnomes in heavy leathers and steel-lined gloves picking up as much as they could in the room. The construct we had been sent to kill was carried from the room, escorted by one of the leaders of the Alliance, and there was nothing that I or Erinys or Duran or Sonder could do but watch. Nothing at all.

* * *

"Now what? _Now what?"_

Erinys was angrier than me, if that were possible. She paced the floor of the inn's room, back and forth like a metronome, as the rest of us just sat and watched. "You can't be happy with this. _You _can't be happy with this!" she said to me.

"I'm not," I replied, and meant it.

"What can we do?" Sildri asked, bringing us even back down to the ground. I'd almost run to her when she'd walked in, but she had waved me off with a smile and a _not now._ There had been a bandage across her lower arm and her robes had been covered in blood, but that was all. None of the blood had been hers. Now she sat next to me on the long chair, her arm sometimes brushing up against me. "We were ordered."

The order had come after I had tried twice to find out where the thing was being kept. The second time, it had been made clear that a third request would be unacceptable. I'd taken the hint and come back to the inn. At least they'd given us that much, rather than just kicking us out of the city.

"Yeah, well, orders…" Sara mumbled. She had wanted to try that third time, but I'd ordered her not to, something she'd enjoyed pointing out.

"You cannot abandon your hunt." The voice came from the construct that had survived. Saga hadn't come down from wherever she had escaped to when Diley had arrived, had instead sent this thing back to us. The other construct she had thrown into the lava when it had been destroyed. Now this one was all she had left, she said.

"And we won't," Duran said.

"Damn right," muttered Erinys as she paced. She'd taken the gnome's interruption as an almost personal insult.

"Saga. How many left?" I hadn't told the others of the controlling figure Saga had told me about. Better to focus on one thing at a time.

"One," she replied through her last remaining doll. "It will know of the death of the other two. It will be much smarter."

"Fucking great."

I made a decision. "There's nothing we can do-" I held up a hand at the wave of indignation. "There's nothing we can do _right now._" They quietened down and I went on. "We get some sleep tonight, then we go back home to Stormwind and take a break. I don't know, go to the beach or something." Laughter. I had to smile. "Yeah, yeah, but seriously. Two down, one to go. We'll talk when we're not blasted out of our minds on fatigue."

"Goodnight already."

* * *

"How are you?"

I felt arms around my shoulders and looked up. Sildri stood above me, arms draped over me and hair covering us both like a halo. "Hey."

"You did good today, Elias."

"Somehow it doesn't feel that way."

"That's because you want perfection. You never settle for just a little less." She leaned down until her head was almost touching mine, and I could feel her breath against my cheeks. I wanted to reach up and bring her down, but resisted the impulse, strong as it was. Her eyes bored holes into mine, like Sagas, but the effect was far, far different. "We'll fix it, all of us."

I encased her hands with my own, and for a moment the two of us made a miniature tableaux; priest and confessor. "You think so?" Not the first time, or even the first time this week, I wondered how stupid I had been to close off my memories of those last years in the north, wondering what I'd lost just to sleep at night. It couldn't have been worth it.

"I know so," she replied. She ducked down and kissed me on the forehead, and then withdrew back up. "Now get some sleep. Everything will look better in the morning," she said, and for the first time since we'd gotten the old team back together I knew, somehow, that she was mistaken.


	16. Screw War, Lets Drink

"Finally."

"Don't complain, you're not paying. Elias, Aaron, Erinys, take these before my fingers drop off."

"Thanks."

"Appreciated."

"Same."

"Sonder, Duran, I think I got the accent right this time? God these steins are heavy."

"Aye this is the stuff, ta lass."

"Thanks!"

"Sorry Sildri but the man had never heard of what you-"

"This'll do fine, Sara."

"For you I don't know what you can drink but I figure water should be safe enough, here."

"Thank you."

Like the old song goes, sometimes you want to go where everyone knows you, where they'll nod and smile when you walk in and order. Then sometimes you want to go to where people will see you walk in and leave you the hell alone, so long as you're not going to be disturbing their drinking, or asking dumb questions. Where the less savoury types came to get the heavy boozing done, the bars for rogues and warlocks and, weirdly enough, city guards. In Ironforge there was the aptly-named Shadow Cavern, a part of the city where the original architects had, for some reason, just chiselled a rough tunnel from the stone and left it as-is, and the place attracted the uncouth and uncivil like a giant grim magnet. Presumably Darnassus had something similar, although how dark and shadowy a tree could be made to feel I had no idea. Probably the Exodar had some cargo-bays in the back somewhere, which the Draeni bunked off to for a smoke.

In Stormwind it was called the Slaughtered Lamb, and it was where you drank if you were: One; big enough to not be screwed with, and two; wanted to stay out of the way of the clerks, spies, guards and general busybodies that the Alliance capital had like rats.

"Congratulations then." Aaron lifted his drink up, and the air was filled with the sound of clinking glass and pewter as we knocked them together, and then knocked them down. "On our second confirmed kill."

Aaron had barely reacted to Saga, when he had been formally introduced (if that was even that had happened). I'd made sure to be in the same room when she had arrived, travelling overland from Ironforge to Stormwind days after our tram had arrived. His poker face had barely twitched, and made me promise myself again never to play it with him. I wouldn't stand a chance.

"Except it wasn't exactly a kill, was it?" Erinys said as the glasses came back down.

"Oh Gods, please not tonight," Sara whispered in mock terror, sitting down at the table with a clang. On the way into the bar she had waved and smiled at a couple of people, something that hadn't surprised me at all. "I've had enough words about that thing."

"Aye well at least words was _all_ ye had about it."

Sara looked a little sheepish at that, but not much. It hadn't been her fault, after all. I'd found out the full story after the interrogations had ended, when they were carting us all away from Ironforge after our hunt had ended. We'd been thanked and had our hands shaken and then almost eagerly shoved onto the tram back to Stormwind. Sara had filled us in then.

Pure bad luck; when the Gnome commander had ordered his men into the depths of Ironforge after us they had stumbled accidentally into the same corridors that Taelan and Sara were rushing through, trying to get to the rest of us already in combat with the corrupted construct. Finding a member of the Horde deep inside Ironforge – one still technically on the run from the Stormwind Guard at that – they had immediately arrested him with great enthusiasm, and Sara had had to do some fast talking to avoid being labelled a spy herself. In the end she had sat out the whole fight from outside the forges, with a guard standing over her and the unlucky Blood Elf.

"What's going to happen to Taelan?" Sara asked as the SI:7 spy sat down with his own mug. Back in civilian clothes like the rest of us, he could have been any diplomat slumming it in the city.

"Probably nothing, at least not by us. He's under guard in the keep again, he'll be shipped back as soon as we inform Silvermoon about his little transgressions. Maybe they'll dock his pay, or take away his vanity mirrors, or whatever it is Blood Elves to do punish their errant special forces."

"He helped us a lot," I pointed out. Even if I thought he was more than a little smug and arrogant; "I might be dead right now if he hadn't turned up when he had."

Aaron nodded. "Yes, but…" He stopped, and just shrugged. "Politics."

"What a week though," Sara said with feeling, sloshing her beer inside her glass and staring at it like a crystal ball, a faint smile still on her face. "Got to admit when I guilted Elias into letting me come on this safari I wasn't expecting anything quite like…well…_this._"

"You've not been a part of one of his little cabals before?" Sildri asked.

Sara just shook her head. "Different squads, different groups. I only got promoted to specialist forces a few months before he quit."

"Usually they're not quite this ridiculous," Sildri said with a smile.

"About as dangerous though," Erinys added.

Alright, that was enough. "Hey, come on guys."

"There's no use Elias. You are notorious," Sonder said. "I sympathise."

"This is a common occurrence?" Saga asked. Not the construct she had used in Ironforge, with her speaking through it. Actually Saga. Clad in an oversized coat I'd grabbed from the guild-house storage, she clutched the metal mug between her claws, eyes glowing a faint green in the darkness. Occasionally she glanced around the dark bar, as if expecting something to leap out at her. I could tell her she needn't have bothered, and after a few…extraordinary guests had passed by our table she had stopped doing it.

_I will be seen._

_This isn't going to matter tonight._

_I thank you for the offer Elias, but-_

_Saga believe me, the people in the place we're going to have a vested interest in keeping their mouths shut about any…unusual…people who walk in._

It hadn't taken long for her to see what I meant. Shed' stopped at the entrance, hair raised like a cat sensing a fight, and I'd had to convince her to come in out of the cold. Twice so far during the night robed figures had trailed past us, with too-pale or cracked and blackened skin, or eyes that glowed in colours human eyes shouldn't. One of them had had his demon familiar in tow, a spindly black creature, all horns and sharp limbs. Both of them had gone to the back of the bar, through to the stairs that led down into the basements of the old building, and neither of them had so much as glanced at her. I'd heard stories about what the warlocks did down there, had never wanted to really go and confirm any.

_And this corruption is accepted?_

_Tolerated,_ I had replied. The Stormwind Mage's Organisation, whose tower and headquarters were mean yards away, would be more than enough to deal with anything a bunch of people in a basement could summon up, if it ever came to it. She seemed mollified but I couldn't help but notice she kept one hand free while we were inside the bar.

"Aye, you could say that," Duran replied to Saga. "We," he gestured around the table at the others, "used to do this kind of thing a lot."

"Long time ago," Sildri said sadly, without seeming to realise she had done so.

"Did something occur to end this?" she asked, and even though I knew she meant it innocently I could see the reaction in everyone else. Sara, not part of the inner circle or its final disaster, just looked away politely. Everyone else discreetly avoided looking at anyone else around the table. Except for one.

Duran and I locked eyes for a moment, and there was a slight nod from the Dwarf: _Absolutely not._ "Aye, you might say that," he said, then leaned forward. "But that's a story for another time." _Thank you, old man._

"Speaking of stories…" Sara began.

Sonder picked it up and ran with it. "Yes exactly!" He took another gulp from the huge tankard the barman had found for him. "Tell us your own."

Sonder was practically beaming, and Saga was wilting in the light of the Draeni's enthusiasm. She glanced around and at me, emerald eyes looking like a kitten having a torch shoved in front of its face. "What? Mine?"

"What the big daft sod means, " Duran said gently, shoving Sonder backwards (_Hey!)_, "is, after the few days we've just had, we'd appreciate knowing you just a little better. Since we seem to have been thrown into this mess together." _A mess you're definitely part of,_ he didn't say.

Her eyes glanced at mine, whip-fast, and I thought back to the small conversation we'd had in the crowd that day in Ironforge, before the hunt had kicked off. I kept my mouth shut and tried to look innocent and ignorant. "What do you wish to learn?" Saga asked quietly.

"Where you're from," Erinys asked quickly, with that intense look in her that meant she really wanted something. She spun her empty mug on the wooden surface of the table like she wanted to drill down through it.

Sildri didn't like taking cues from the other woman, but she went on anyway: "Between us we've travelled most of the world," she said, "but I've never met anyone like you." She leaned over the table and I could see the old light in new eyes. She wanted to _know things._ She could be as bad as Duran when she really got going.

Saga leaned back, one clawed hand around the drink she hadn't touched yet, another tapping the table softly. I wonder if she had picked that up from one of us. When we'd met in the forest she'd seemed more…feral. Inhuman, maybe. Now she looked more natural, less like a doll and more like a person. "I was…born…in the north," she said. "Past the highest shores, there is-"

"Northrend?" Aaron said, and the temperature dropped just a little around the table.

She hesitated for a second, and then nodded. "Yes, the very north." She stopped, clearly searching for the words. "My people live there, beyond the mountains, with the others." Aaron looked like he wanted to say something, but stopped when Saga kept talking. She did it slowly, dirge-like, as if she were remembering it for the first time. "We had access to limited technology, but the constructs are one we had control of. They were adequate for survival, we came to rely on them."

"What happened?" Sara asked.

Saga shrugged, and it reminded me of Aaron, a second ago. She _was_ learning from us. Certainly faster than we were learning from her. "Something went wrong, with some of them. They were made for manual labour, some of them…learned otherwise, somehow." She glanced over in my direction. "One of my…comrades? Friends. Took advantage of this. He altered several, how he did it we do not know. Then he came here. I followed."

"Alone?" Aaron asked, drinking in every word between gulps.

"I was one of the only ones deemed suitable," Saga said.

"Harsh."

"They have to be destroyed. The other elf is more right than he knows. They are dangerous," she was looking at Aaron as she said it, who just raised his hands defensively.

"Well above my pay-grade."

"What?"

"My superiors alone have authority over the captured machine," he clarified.

"Oh? Are you out of the loop?" Erinys teased the man.

Aaron waved his empty mug at her. "Hey, I'm still your contact aren't I? Speaking of being 'out'…"

Raised glasses all around. "Another round."

* * *

"Is this your familiar? Beautiful job if I may say-"

Erinys gave him a death-glare as Saga looked on in polite confusion. "That isn't yours to touch my friend. I'd go back to your table if I were you," she practically hissed. He did so.

"Teach me that," Sonder said, watching him go.

"Not 'till you're older."

"_Where_ was I?" Sildri muttered as the luckless warlock stumbled back to his friends.

"Spies," Sara volunteered.

"Yes! So what _is_ it like, being a spy? I always wanted to know."

Aaron sighed through his beer. "Boredom. Boredom and occasional endless terror."

"I know that joke. They say it about the guilds," I said. "About me too, now I think about it."

"Don't brag, ye'll sound silly," Duran said.

"Too late to avoid that."

"Shut up Sonder," I replied.

The man waved a dismissive hand at the rest of us, which Duran tried to swat away and missed. "At least when your lot get the terror-parts you usually have weaponry to hand. Sometimes all we have is a piece of paper and a quill. And not a sharp quill either."

"I applied to SI:7 you know," Sara suddenly piped up. She had her hands crossed on the table and her chin rested on them, staring across the room at nothing.

"What?" I said in shock. "No way, when?"

Sara looked thoughtful. "After you guys left I think? Bramford and his doom-'n'-gloom buddies got promoted, everything got very harsh and military for a while. I was thinking of a change of career."

"Sara Whitgens, Super-Spy?"

A shrug. "Sure."

"What made you change your mind?" Sildri asked.

"The Old Man convinced me to stay." You could hear the capital letters drop into place when she talked about the guild-master. "Said he needed cadre for the skirmishers, and I was one of the best he had."

"He does have a way with words," Erinys said wistfully.

"That he does."

"The guild-master is your superior?" Saga asked. She had a mug of beer now, the same as the rest of us. It might as well have been water though, for all the effect is seemed to be having on her.

"Absolutely," Sildri said, and everyone else at the table nodded their heads.

"Since old times," Duran said, the oldest person in the room by a mile. "He practically brought up the guild, the same way I brought up these little scrappers."

"Gods, now I know you're drunk," Erinys said.

Aaron stood. "Enough." He waved away the protestations of the rest of the table. "Unlike you useless muscle-heads, I have work to do tomorrow." He pulled his jacket on his shoulders and turned. "When I have news I'll come back for you all, so stay in the city. Until then…"

"G'night Aaron."

"Night, Vickers."

"Hey, he left his drink."

* * *

"You use it because secretly you are afraid."

"What? Nope."

"You must not be afraid of the blows old friend, you must instead relish the scars as memories, good memories of battles fought and won, like we do!"

"Speak for yourself."

"See, even Erinys thinks you're crazy, and _she's_ crazy."

"You should practise with me, without your shield."

"No, nonono, absolutely no way. Never."

"Why not!"

"Because I'd die. You'd kill me."

"If you killed him I'd be sad."

"See? Think of Sildri's feelings."

"You are afraid, I understand."

"Oh shut up already."

* * *

"So it is a parallel hierarchy, with your ruler – your king – at the top of both?"

Saga's green eyes were staring intently into mine. I felt like I could fall into them, if I didn't have Sildri sitting next to me, keeping me from being sucked in. "More or less," I replied. "The guilds stay inside the laws of the Alliance, and we have to provide troops when we're called on, in a war or if a suitably catastrophic demon or monster or whatever appears."

"Or whenever the bastards feel like it," Erinys muttered darkly.

"What she said. But in exchange we get autonomy, mostly. We train our own troops and we're allowed to keep weapons and magic stocks that civilians aren't, and our men can carry them in the city without the guard slapping us down."

"What of the other racial alliance, the Horde? Do they have a similar arrangement?"

"Roughly," Erinys said, straightening up. "They have less oversight than we do, but the penalties for disobeying are a lot tougher. Thrall – their Warchief, the ruler – is pretty reasonable. His underlings; less so." She rubbed her arm, where I knew an old scar was. Unreasonable, hah.

"Is there much conflict then?" Saga asked. Erinys, Sildri and I shared a glance.

"It depends, on the individual," Sildri said. "Some of their guilds are extremely militant; if you meet them they'll fight, always. Others are more like the Irregulars, more…hmm...Erinys?"

This morning, Sildri wouldn't have asked the other woman to do something like that. The beer seemed to be acting as a cushion between the two women, and the tall fighter just shrugged. "For profit. It doesn't sound nice, but there it is."

"They join guilds instead of their militaries for much the same reason we do," I said. "They're not just mindless hordes, regardless of what they teach you growing up. Teach _us_ growing up, I should say."

"Why did you join?" Saga asked, looking at the three of us, drinking it all in. The table was emptier now. Sonder had left an hour or so ago, Duran not long after. Sara had begged off, and left the four of us in an emptying bar, the barman glaring at us occasionally.

Sildri was the first to answer. "I wanted to leave my home, to see the world." _To escape my mother._ "The guilds are the easiest way to do it, if you do not wish to join with the Alliance."

Emerald starbursts slid to me. I just shrugged. "Tradition. My family were guildsmen, mother and father both." That was most of the story, but I wasn't going to tell her the rest. Saga's eyes went to the final person around the table, and I knew she'd get even less of an answer than I had given her.

"Nope, don't even think about it," Erinys said, waving a warning finger at the green woman. Saga looked like she wanted to ask why, but I put a hand on her arm – it felt warm, furred – and shook my head. _Not until later._ Years later, if I knew Erinys. Saga looked disappointed, but let it rest.

I wondered if we would know her for that long.

* * *

"Gods it's cold." Erinys huffed into her hands and rubbed them together.

"Maybe we drank too much," Sildri said, rubbing her eyes.

"Just get some sleep, you two, you'll be fine," I said. They glared at me with the glare that the hangover-prone give to those who never get hangovers. As if that was my fault.

"Fine, whatever. Goodnight Elias."

Sildri reached up and pecked me on the cheek. "No funny business, you two," she said with a smile.

"They are good friends," Saga said, as the two of us stood in the rough darkness outside the Slaughtered Lamb. Torches blazed on the walls in the distance, but in the Mage Quarters the only light came from the occasional post, scattered about the greenery. Everywhere else was dark and silent.

I felt a warm glow as I watched the two leave. "Yeah. Yeah, they are." I turned and looked up at her. "Thanks, for back in there."

"For what?" she asked.

"For talking."

"It was…I learned a lot," she said.

"And?" I prodded her. I still felt awake, even after the session in the bar.

She sighed, her breath coming out in the cold air as gusts of warmth. "It was…good. To talk again."

There it was, that look again. I looked off into the distance, the lantern-lights of the city laying out a path in the darkness. "Whenever you want to share the rest, it'll be fine," I said, and heard her breath pause, for just a second, beside me. I went on. "You left some things out of what you told the others, but I guess we didn't tell you some things about us either."

"I wish to trust you," she said after a heartbeat. Then another. "But the stakes are high. I…"

I'd heard that tone of voice before, one that you heard sooner or later, if you lived your life with a sword close at hand. I'd heard it during battles with commanders looking over plans and predicted body-counts, in dirty sewer crossroads with enemies splashing behind us. Heard it from people walking a tightrope in their own heads. Usually lives had been involved at the time. "Can you at least tell me how high?" I asked.

She looked directly at me, through me. For a half-second it felt like the humanity, the familiarity she had showed during the last week we had met had sloughed off, and again she was an alien, unknowable doll standing beside me, emerald eyes boring through my soul. Then I shivered in the cold wind, and the moment passed. "How high can you imagine, Elias Conray?"

To that I didn't have an answer. "Goodnight Saga," I said.

"Goodnight."

I watched as without a sound she simply…leaped away. One second she was there, in another there was nothing but a green blur fading into the darkness as it went from rooftop to rooftop, to the hills that were a natural border of the city, and then she was gone. I looked after her for a moment, thinking about the question. I'd had an answer once, years ago, before I had went to the mage and had this mist put in my skull that had swallowed that answer, along with whatever nightmare I'd been through. Sildri and Erinys and Sonder and the others. Everyone else had lived with it, but something about the old Elias hadn't been able to.

Well, fuck him.

Maybe it was time to find a way to remove it.


	17. Clearing Down

I could do two things.

I could sit in the Irregulars meeting hall, thinking and double-thinking and over-thinking myself until Aaron or Saga got a lead on our third and (Gods-hope) last construct. Think over whether I really wanted to get rid of this self-inflicted amnesia and get back memories I knew were toxic. Wonder whether getting back those days with Sildri and Duran and the others were really worth not sleeping peacefully again.

Or I could just go out and _get it done._

* * *

Like most guild headquarters, the Irregulars' was an iceberg. Anyone looking from the outside in would see a medium-sized fort, surrounded by training grounds and mansions. Impressive, but not anything your average nobleman would have had to bust his bank vault to construct for himself. From the inside was another story. The main keep extended at least three stories down and spread out, covering every inch of the land the guild owned. Armouries and barracks and any of the other dozen workhouses and storerooms you'd need to keep a medium battalion quartered, fed and armed. The Irregulars enjoyed a little more success than your average guild, a little more reputation and expectation, and to the people in it they got paid back for that hard work with better accommodation than your average guildhall too. Heated barracks in winter, and a half-dozen rooms scattered through the complex that were nothing but well-carpeted collections of books, well-stocked fireplaces and comfy chairs. The kind you could sink into and never be seen again.

When everything had kicked off we had commandeered one of these setups for our own use, off in some corner of the estate, and treated it as our own private clubroom. A couple of metres away was a much less well-adorned meeting-room, covered in endless maps and plans and scrawled images. Closer by; two-occupant rooms meant for officers. We'd taken them all. An errant cadre of mages had tried to argue they were higher in seniority and deserved them more, but after a long-fought argument they had been evicted and ourselves installed in their place. It was better than anything the Stormwind Guard had. Better than anything SI:7 had too, if the expression on Aaron's face when he had stepped into the warm common-room had been any judge.

The only problem was to get to the winding staircase to the exits, from the sleeping-chambers, you needed to go through said common-room.

"Going somewhere?"

I looked over at the voice and saw Erinys sitting in one of the well-worn chairs, a book in one hand and her legs stretched out in front of the fireplace, that huge braid of hair spiralling down to the floor beside her. Her eyes were staring directly at mine.

"Just headed out for a while," I said.

"You know that Vickers and Bramford want us to travel in pairs until we catch the last of these damn things? I really don't want to leave this chair right now, so could you not?" she asked, trying her best approximation of an endearing frown.

It was tempting. Abandon this whole thing and just go back to bed. Wake up tomorrow and pretend that nothing was wrong, and everything was fine. But then I remembered the way Sildri smiled at me, and the sadness hiding behind it when she put her hand on mine. Enough. I was doing it. Tonight.

Plus, if anyone was going to come with me on this little expedition, at least it was Erinys who'd be coming with me. "Sorry." I shrugged and gave an apologetic smile.

"Gah, fine." She tossed her book aside and stood, braid moving up behind her like a snake as she stood and stretched. Her bones creaked audibly. "Gods I'd forgotten how good this place was. Give me five minutes." She walked off back to the dorms and left me in the dusky room.

I was thinking the exact same thing as her. Life in the Guard had been fine, for what it was worth. But it didn't even come close to this. I'd been an idiot to run away. I could still remember everything before the fog in my mind. I'd been across the world, been things, places, people that most humans living in the Alliance could never dream of or put words to. Whatever I'd seen back then that had made me abandon my friends and colleagues, had made me put my life away for ten years of spinning my wheels in the guard, had made me forget the times I'd had with the woman I was still desperately in love with, I'd face tonight.

Surely it couldn't have been _that_ bad.

I was jerked from my reverie as the door swung back open with a creek and Erinys walked back in, dressed in simple boots and leathers. She tugged a pair of gloves over her hands. "Alright, lead on."

The night air in Stormwind was cold, as winter closed over the city with a merciless grip. Gods, it would be Winters Veil in only a few days. I breathed out and could see my breath there in front of me. For a second I felt dizzy, just standing there in the guild yards, Erinys standing there next to me. It was like ten years had fallen away, like nothing had changed since the last time I was in the guild.

"Where are we headed that's so important it can't wait 'til tomorrow?" she asked, doing the same. Then the feeling left, and those years fell back on me. I glanced up at Erinys. Ten years doing nothing had hit both of us, albeit for different reasons. She'd weathered them a little better than I had somehow, even though her situation had been incomparably worse.

_Are you sure?_ I asked myself, one last time, and the answer came back loud and clear:

_Absolutely._

"To the Mage Quarters."

* * *

I waited until we were out of sight of the guildhall and inside the Stormwind gates, as if doing it in sight of my (adopted) home would somehow be a bad luck omen. She listened, and then just nodded. "So that's what this little excursion is all about."

"Anything to add?"

"No, except that it's about time." she replied. "I had a bet on with Duran."

"You didn't."

"No, and I'd have lost anyway."

That brought me up short, and I almost tripped myself up on the cobblestones. "What? _What?_ You bet _against_ me doing this?"

She shrugged, and looked at least a little sheepish. "Duran thought it would take a few months, and yeah, I disagreed."

I could always count on Erinys for honesty. Sometimes the truth could be harsh though. "What? Why? Come on, don't play games with me."

She kicked out and a loose stone went spinning into the gutters. "It went bad up there in Northrend Elias. Real bad." She wasn't saying anything I didn't already know. "Some of us got it worse than others."

God, I knew it. Even if I didn't have the memories, I had lived through the aftermath. Duran had gone back to Ironforge to be with his family and had barely left the city for the next five years. Sildri had joined the priesthood under the controlling – but safe, always safe – wings of her mother. Sonder had thrown himself into his work like a madman, or someone who was looking for a quick exit from this world into the next. I'd had the entire thing excised from my brain and left the guild entirely, joined the Guard and hadn't stepped foot outside Stormwind in a decade. Erinys had…

"You don't have to explain yourself to me," I said, my voice barely carrying through the air between us. "It's in the past."

"When you came to visit me in the prison, you never asked me why," she replied, just as quietly. "I always appreciated that."

"You're the one who has to live with it." I heard her give a short harsh laugh. "What?"

"Vickers said the same thing."

"Aaron?" I asked in surprise, and then remembered the days after I had practically sprung her, before we had moved out into the forests to hunt the first creature. They'd met, alone, and he hadn't told me why. "I did wonder what you two talked about back then."

"A whole bunch of stuff." She jerked a hand in front of her, like tugging on an invisible chain. "He went to bat for you, you know? Getting me out for this little mission pissed off a lot of people. One in particular. He had to make a deal." She smiled. "He's a good man, for a spy."

Oh gods, I had forgotten. The younger son was still alive. He wouldn't… "What happened?" Surely they couldn't just shove her back in that tiny cell. Not after all the promises they'd made. Not after what we'd gone through so far and would go through at least once more.

"This doesn't end for me the same way that it does for you," she said, and for a second even though we were both covered in shadows and the night's darkness, I knew I could see something sad there on her face, wrapped deep into her skin.

"Erinys, I don't-"

"Enough," she said, and pointed. Without realising it I'd walked us out of the trade district, out from the dry cobblestones and onto the half-frozen grass of the Mages Quarter. "This was it, right?"

I looked up, and she was right. The same wooden creaky sign swinging in the slight breeze, the same slight smell of peppermint and rosewater that seemed to claw its way up my nostrils and give me a headache just being here. The same dancing lights just visible beyond the clouded glass windows.

_CONELT: ENCHANTMENTS AND ILLUSIONRY  
EST:_

No-one I'd asked had ever known how long the _est_ was. I knew though, because Sildri had gotten it from the man's assisstant long years ago, when we were both trainees without a single mission to our name. The shop was barely older than we were, the owner just had it there for the mystery and the extra custom it brought in. He had had a reputation for being honest, and for being willing to bend the rules just a little bit, so long as whatever you asked for wasn't putting anyone else at risk. Everyone had known it; most students had asked the man for potions at some point. I'd known it, and then years later when I had come back from Northrend with horror in my head, I'd still known it. Had went to him to have it taken out.

"Are you going or what?" Erinys asked beside me. "It's freezing out here."

I stepped up to the door, the lights dancing inside it. Mages never slept. Before I knocked though, I turned back to her. "We're gonna talk about this again," I warned her. if Aaron was planning on screwing me or my friends over I was going to damn well know it.

She just smiled at that, a smile that reminded me of Sara. "Sure we will," she said, as that smile said _not on your life._

* * *

It had been ten years but it looked like he hadn't aged a day. Probably because even ten years ago he had looked ancient and withered, like the spells and magic artefacts he made and traded in had already sapped the vitality from his small frame. For all that though the small man in front of me still felt powerful, like a vibrating string. Like all mages he wore robes, and the cloth on these shifted as I watched. They were patternless, without the normal ornate embroidery of most mages, and the very emptiness of it made my eyes strain as the fibres of the cloth itself shifted and moved. Electric blue eyes hidden behind a brown beard streaked with grey looked up into mine. "Mr Conray. You return." His voice was thin but clear as a bell.

"You remember me?" I asked in surprise. It had been a decade since I'd last stepped in here.

"You were unique," he said, and turned away as if that explained it. He shuffled away to one of the benches near the countertop and examined the complex glasswork on its surface. Without looking around he plucked a small shard of metal from the counter and tapped it against the pipes, which turned green. He nodded like he had just accomplished something long and difficult, and then turned back to me. "Your request was unusual and highly unorthodox."

"Illegal, too."

For someone so tall Erinys could move like a rogue. I hadn't even heard her come in. The mage Tolwin Conelt glared over my shoulder. "I don't know you."

"She's a friend of mine," I said quickly as I stepped between them. I didn't need Erinys pissing the man off, not now when I wanted his help.

He gave me a pitying glance, and then went back to whatever strange experiment he seemed to be conducting on this shop floor. Now I thought about it, half the conversations I'd ever had with the man were to his back. "Were you not happy with my service?" he asked, and I could hear that string vibrating under his voice.

I'd wondered how to approach this. Now that I was here I couldn't think of any of the explanations I'd already ran through in my head. "I _was_. But things change," I settled on.

"It was a very thorough hiding."

Fragments, half-remembered thoughts. Sometimes waking up in the mornings, jerked awake by the feeling that something else had been in the room with me. And the cold. Always the cold. "It was," I lied, "but I'd like it…" the words seemed to be stuck in my throat, and I had to force them out, "removed." _Think of Sildri._

He turned back to me and fixed those eyes on mine. "You do?" I nodded, and he shrugged. "Very well."

"What the hell?" Erinys asked.

All I could do was wave a hand at her. "Mages, you know." She rolled her eyes back at me.

He came back in minutes. "Here," the man said, and dumped a potion into my hands. He kept the hand out. "And now you will pay me."

I knew better than to argue, or complain. Merchants in Stormwind bartered, but mages were above such petty activities. You bought their services and in return you paid. On the spot. I went into my pocket and gave him the small bag I'd brought with me. It clinked heavily as it landed on my palm.

"It will all return to you," Conelt said, "gradually. Goodbye, Mr Conray," Then turned back away to his glasswork and colours. No matter how hard I tried now I wouldn't get his attention. Our business was done, so we were irrelevant to his world now.

"These people are unbelievable," Erinys said, once we were back in the cold air outside. I wiped sweat from my brow, it had been _hot_ inside that shop. The small glass phial was still in my hands though. I clutched it like a man on a piece of driftwood offered a ship's rope. "Is that it?" she asked.

"I guess so." I stared at the liquid inside. It could have been yellow or amber or something between the two. Even held stock-still the small ounces inside shifted in the glass as I held it up to the moonlight. If this was-

"_Well?_"

"Well what?"

"Well drink up goddamnit!" she snapped at me.

Without giving myself any more time to think, I threw away the tiny cork stopper into the night, and drank up. I tasted like copper and mustard on my tongue and I nearly choked, but I drank. For a second the world swam in front of me, and I had the feeling the ground underneath me was melting. I stared at Erinys and for half a second I saw a leering blue-eyed skull instead of a face, and I recoiled backwards. I could feel the chill setting over my face, my clothes, hands over my eyes. I could feel-

_THE ICE!_

Then it was gone, and I was left kneeling on the ground of the Stormwind Mage Quarter, Erinys' hand on my back.

"Are you alright?"

I coughed and tasted the strange mixture at the back of my throat. Gods I would need to wash that away. "Yeah. I…yeah."

"You look like shit. Want me to go beat up that mage?"

I laughed and felt daggers in the back of my mouth. "God, that hurts. No, let's go home." I looked up and saw her looking down at me. I sighed. "Go on, ask."

"Do you remember anything yet?"

"Yeah, I remember the guy saying it would be gradual, five minutes ago. Do those muscles get in the way of your ears or something?"

She smacked me on the shoulder. It felt like an anvil across my back. "Smartass. Let's get back then, maybe tonight I can get to sleep before dawn."

"Erinys?" I asked, as we started the trek back across the grass, to the bridge and the trade district beyond, to the gates of the city and the guildhall that always felt more of a home to me than my real home in Old Town ever had.

"What?" she asked, looking down at me. She had always been there for me, for all of us. Had always been a rock the rest of the squad could depend on. Nobody had been more shocked when she had done it. I remembered Sildri had cried when they handed the sentence down, cried and cursed her forever.

She kept glancing up at the stars as we walked, blazing above us in the clear winter sky. She had always loved stargazing. If I'd done nothing else on this ridiculous mission, I had at least given one thing, to somebody. "Thanks for coming," I whispered. She just looked at me like I was mad.

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

"Hey, look."

She didn't have to tell me, I could see him from here. Go get out of the city and to the guild-owned lands you had to pass by the walls that led to the two old forts that held the Guard training grounds and the SI:7 buildings. Usually the guards were alert no matter what time of day or night it was. Tonight though both of them were absent, and instead of their sharp weapons and stern glances, there were only two voices coming from beyond the gates. I glanced at Erinys, and at the same time we nodded. As casually as we could, we walked just a little closer to that stone archway.

"-ouncil wanted to be kept informed, you knew this. They want to meet him."

"_No,_ absolutely not. Besides the fact we have no idea who this…this _thing_ is, we're still after one of the bloody things he's bringing to us, or had you forgotten?"

"Regardless of how well your tame dogs are doing, we're still down an Archmage, a Guard Commander, and a handful of civilians on top of them, or had_ you_ forgotten? Cogwrench has already vouched for him."

I shared a glance with Erinys, and she shrugged. _Vouched for who?_ I turned back to the conversation, resisting the urge to stick my ear around the corner for a better look.

"Oh, _Cogwrench_ did? Well that's fine then, since he's the pinnacle of reason and sanity! That damn gnome is too enthusiastic for his own good."

"It's been _decided_, captain. Go get some sleep, and come to your senses by morning."

"I'll lodge a complaint."

"Be free to, it's still happening."

I pushed myself farther into the shadows against the wall as the voices ended, and footsteps began to echo from in front of us. After a second I heard the _hiss_ of a match being lit, and a curse that I recognised, and then I didn't have to bother hiding anymore as Aaron walked out of the archway trying to light a cigarette. He looked pissed as hell. "Evening."

"_Fuck!" _He jumped backwards and lost his cig in the dark. He glared at the two of me like we'd kicked his dog. "What the hell Elias, are you trying to scare me to death?"

"Everything going okay back there?" Erinys asked, and then just smiled when he glared at her as well.

He brought another out of his pocket, and had about the same success trying to get it lit. "I didn't know you smoked."

"Not usually," he responded, and took a long drag as the paper finally caught. "That," he started, "was one of my colleagues. How much did you hear? Don't even pretend you weren't eavesdropping."

"Sounds like we're getting an addition to our team," I said, and was surprised as he just shook his head.

"Gods, if that was all you were getting." He sighed and took another puff, and then dropped it to the ground, grinding it into the stonework like he had a grudge against it. "You'll find out tomorrow, when the council visits us." He sighed. "This is going to get worse before it gets better."

Oh hell, that was something I could have gone the rest of this mission without hearing. We made our reports through Aaron and that had been fine so far. Now what the hell did they want? I asked as much, and Aaron looked as annoyed as I had ever seen him at the question.

"_Tomorrow,_ Elias. Go back to sleep." He turned away, and then back. "Do I want to know what you're doing sneaking around Stormwind at the dead of night?"

"Nope."

"Fine, whatever. Goodnight."

"Sounds interesting," Erinys said, as Aaron stalked away back into his organisation's headquarters.

* * *

"You're back. Did your little tryst finish acceptably?"

"Oh be quiet," I growled at Sara as we walked back into the common-room. The young black woman was sat in the chair that Erinys had been occupying earlier in the night, and where the taller woman had just sat in it, Sara looked almost swallowed up. "Why are you up?"

"Trouble."

I thought she was asking me a question. "You'll find out in the morning."

"No, I mean _trouble,"_ she replied, and vaulted from the depths of the chair towards us. "Bramford called me up, to pass on a message."

"At midnight?"

"Bramford. Asshole. Remember?"

"True. What's up?"

"We're getting visitors tomorrow. Him and some of his cronies. And our employers," she said. I could practically hear the scorn around 'employers'.

"We know." I waved away the question I could see coming from her open mouth. "We met Aaron earlier. Did Bramford say what it was about?"

"Only to be on our best behaviour and to do nothing that might impugn on the reputation of the Irregulars."

"'Impugn'? God, did he really say that?" Erinys asked in wonderment. She shook her head and walked towards the sleeping quarters. "Night you two."

"Night Erinys." I looked at Sara, who was staring after Erinys. "You should get some sleep too."

"Fine. Goodnight Elias."

As she walked off after the other woman, I thought back to the mage in his workshop, and the potion I had drank.

_Too late for regrets now old man._

* * *

I sat in my room trying to get to sleep, staring up at the wooden ceiling. I don't know what I had expected. Maybe a sudden flash of light and then everything would be back the way it had been, all my memories returned and this fog just gone like it had never been there. Instead there was nothing. I could stare into it all night but it was still unyielding. The only change was that I felt just a little colder, even under the thick bedding we'd stolen from one of the other guild dorms.

_Gradual._

I turned over and tried to get to sleep, but all I could think of was the conversation we'd overheard, and the information we'd been given. Something was changing around and us, and I couldn't see what it was, and that made me just a little bit tense and afraid. I could tell myself I was always like this when a mission came close to ending, but it didn't help. We'd come this far without casualties (_casualties to the team, at least_) on skill and planning and not a small amount of luck, and now that the end was in sight I was waiting for the other boot to drop. For something to go catastrophically wrong and the picture-perfect ending to turn into an image limping over the finish-line. Whatever Aaron's unseen superior and Bramford were planning, it fit the bill.

When I finally slept, my dreams felt cold.


	18. Transinterdictor

_zzzhzzfgzfzSaga Saga are you there respond respond res-_

_Loke? LOKE!? What's wrong, you're not- you sound like you've been damaged!_

_I am I am sorry you were right. Corrupt and taken, I could do nothing I couldddddddDDDDD_

_Stop! Where are you? I can come to you, I can help-_

_No time for me for you for either of us. Camememe down south when Orion ordered but was a trap, was waiting for me at a river cold water we fought…..,._

_Are you alright!?_

_Will live will live constructs helping to repair weld patch me up, will move but not for days too many days. SAGA._

_What? What is it!?_

_He is coming for you they are coming for you. Knows you were right and Orion was wrong and knowledge used against him against us all. Hafiz Hafiz got to him before before we had even left the com- the complex. Both corrupt now both under HIS ITS control. Theyyyy come to the humancity now to remove you. You and thhhhe humansyou have been seen with._

_We'll fight. We'll kill them both, and all the constructs they bring._

_Two two against one against many? chances impossible you must run run and wait for me to repair then wwwe can fight maybe if the humans are as strong durable fast wise as you think they are._

…_No. They have no idea. I told them the constructs were the things hunting them and that I was the only one sent to kill them back. They don't know anything else. If they meet Orion or Hafiz they'll be slaughtered. I have to stay._

_Telltell them if you trustthem the time for deception has passssed. The complex grows silentent to the north and us the only chance hereazzzhzghsgsha. Wewe cannot fail when we are soclose we must find our champions we must find those capable of withstandinggg HIS ITS power we must must. Ulduar Ulduar the soul of the world must not fall must not or darkness all that remains._

_It won't. I swear it._

_Humanselvesmortals ask for higherpowers to intercede for them. We have nosuch recourse titangods gone gone for millennia bbuuut I will try praying for us. Itt cannot hurt. Be safeeee old friendddndn._

_Get well soon._

_I wouldlaugh if I had unbroken jaws remaininging or a wwwworking spine._

…_Was that a joke?_

_Mortalstals rrubbing off on usss. Goooodluck Saga you will need it._

_SCENE BREAK_

…_You're listening in, aren't you?_

_._

_You're quiet but I can feel you there, all cold and silent. I thought I could feel you back in Ironfor- in the city of the dwarves. I guess I know why you didn't help us, now._

_**.**_

_If there's anything left of you Orion I'm sorry it came to this. We always did have different ideas on where we'd find our salvation. I may have thought you were wrong and stubborn and pig-headed – a human-phrase, I think it described you pretty well – but I never doubted you did it because you had all our best interests at heart._

_._

_You won't win. For Loke and all the others you've taken from me, and for Ulduar and the rest of the world. We'll find you and kill you and send you back into the ground and you'll stay there until time ends._

_._

_I swear it._

_._

_._

_.._

…

**…**

******__****…_._****…_._**

**…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._**

******…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._**

**__****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._****…_._**


	19. Lunar Moonlight

Happy holidays, everyone. :)

* * *

_The sky above us is lit up like an inferno, or the workshop of a crazed painter, throwing buckets of reds and greens and blues at the canvas. A riot of colour that blazes for mere seconds and then dissipate into the air. The forges in the Dwarf Quarter are shut down and no fires are lit tonight, as everyone dresses their best and locks their doors, to spend the night on the streets while the festival lasts. With the air clear of smoke and fumes, the stars shine down on the city bright enough that nothing else is needed, and for the rest of the week the revellers will sing and dance and laugh with only stars and fireworks to light the way. Ships have come across from Kalimdor, bringing fireworks and food for the festivities and taking back pilgrims to the Moonglade, as the Night Elves in the city celebrate the years end and remember their home and ancestors, and the rest of us help them by partying along._

_The ships brought something else as well._

"_You're not curious?" Sildri asked, stood beside me as my cloak wrapped us both against the cold night air. _

"_I'm fine where I am," I replied, and try not to shiver. "There'll be other boats tonight."_

_The midnight fireworks still light the air around us. You can see where they came from and who lit them. From one corner of the city they shoot up straight as an arrow, sending out precise bursts of colour and noise like regiments of light as the Dwarves set off the ones they imported from Ironforge. Mixed in among them are ones that blaze crazy paths through and around them and explode in strange shapes and weird colours, or send out sparks in only a single direction, or implode on themselves and disturb the air, causing others to twist around and make stranger patterns, Gnome work._

_When finally the sun had set and the parties had started we'd climbed the old tower inch-by-inch, clambering over stonework and wooden struts to the top. I'd promised her the best view in the city and when we'd finally reached the pinnacle, nearly an hour later, she had taken one look across the city and her eyes had lit up as she saw I hadn't lied. From this far up the people on the streets merged into each other, creating a flowing river of colours and motes of light as the city's populace moved through it in their most colourful clothes, candles in hand._

_I felt Sildri moving next to my side as she moved closer to me, until we were pressed up against each other under the cloak. One arm was on the parapet in front of me and the other was wrapped around her back. She was wearing something she had brought over with her on the boat, some elven silk that felt barely there, and I could feel the heat of her skin through it. I ran a hand down her side and felt her shiver against me._

"_You're sure we won't get caught?" she whispered into my ear._

"_I bribed the guard," I replied. He was probably down there now, twenty gold richer._

"_You're too honest for such a devious plan. Let me guess; Sonder. No wait, he's even straighter than you. Erinys."_

"_Good guess," I admitted._

_She twisted around so we were pressed against each other, together. I looked into moonlight eyes and felt her breath hot against my chest as she put a hand under my shirt and ran a single finger up and down, up and down. "And how's the plan going so far?" she whispered at me._

"_You tell me," I whispered back._

_She smiled. "It's going pretty well," she said, and then neither of us could speak as our lips locked together and hands started unbuckling and unzipping, and the fireworks above us both went unseen._

* * *

_Afterwards we lay on the roof, the cloak covering us and the cold slate of the tower roof on our backs, staring up at the sky as the fireworks shot up pats us and exploded in ripples across the stars. If I closed my eyes for a second I could believe that we were the only two people in the world, two gods staring down as rainbow drops fell into an ocean below making multi-faceted ripples in the water._

_Sildri shifted against me, one arm behind my neck, hand playing idly with my hair. "Having second thoughts?"_

"_About?" I asked._

"_About putting our names in the ring. The contract."_

_I knew what she was talking about and for a second I thought of giving her the same answer I had given the others; _of course not. _ But I couldn't lie to her. I'd tried a couple of times and it hadn't ended well. I wondered if there was something there that made her so angry when she caught someone doing it. I could probably guess a little of it. We knew a lot about each other, mind and body both, but she hardly ever talked about her family. Parents back in Darnassus, a sister somewhere in Outland. "A little bit," I said. "It'd be a big commitment." My last understatement of the year._

"_A great honour," she countered. "There's only four teams in the running according to Anne back at the 'hall. That's not bad odds."_

"_But still, the north…"_

"_It'll be fine. Besides…" Under the cloak, she shifted her leg and suddenly was straddling over me, her body pressing down against mine and her hands wandering around me indescribably and a smile on her lips that promised more, and soon. This part of her had shocked me when we'd made the leap, finally moved from squad-mates to roommates to the same bed. Two years more and I'd known it was real between us, and I'd started thinking beyond the next mission or the next payday. She entranced me. I'd never been shy, but she had a power over me I couldn't do anything to resist. Not that I _wanted_ to resist. "Besides, we'd be there for you," she said as she leaned forward, tongue darting out to brush against my lips as her chest pressed down against mine. "_I'd_ be there with you," she said. "Elias?"_

"_What?" I spoke so quietly I could have sworn she hadn't heard me, but…_

_Two moonstones stared into mine and I wondered what force had plucked them from the sky to make them look at me. "Do you love me?" Sildri whispered. She wrapped a hand around me and it took me a second to realise her grasp wasn't cold. I had no idea how she could make me feel so hot._

"_Yes," I breathed as we made love again under the starlight and fireworks. "Always."_

* * *

"_Hey you two. You missed Sonder getting out-drunk. Out-drank. Whichever."_

"_I was unprepared. Taken unawares. An ambush!"_

"_He fell asleep on the table and everything. It was hilarious."_

_The noise practically drowned them out as we sat down. The park-square of Stormwind had been changed from a tranquil garden into a banquet, wooden tables shaped by magic laid out end-to-end on the grass for anyone and everyone to bring food and drink and sit down. Merchants were camped three-deep everywhere you looked, selling everything you could think of. In one corner, a pair of Night Elves was making money hand over fist selling fireworks to passing revellers. It was paradise._

_The others had already beaten us there, and beaten us to the feast as well. Sonder had already recovered from whatever drinking competition he had lost and had a full tankard next to him, which didn't stay full for long as he gestured animatedly with the Draeni woman sat next to him in words I couldn't understand. He was in a red Draeni robe that should have looked ridiculous but somehow didn't._

_Erinys sat on the bench next to Sildri, and handed her a glass of something tall and fizzy. Her usual long black braided was woven through with something that could have been white string or silver filigree. It turned out the rest of us telling her she would look fine in a dress had gone un-heeded, but in deference to the celebration her clothing was a deep blue, with scattered white stars painted or sewn on. As she sat down she smiled and leaned a little closer to Sildri and… "You're done already? I'd have thought he had more stamina than that."_

_The effect was immediately. Sildri blushed bright purple, and by the toothy grin on Erinys' face I had done the same. "You evil, evil creature," Sildri hissed, and slapped away the other woman, taking a long swig of her glass and trying not to meet my eyes._

"_I hope you fall in a well!" I shouted at her over the din of an entire city partying, and got a similar smile in return._

"_Push me in tomorrow when I'm hung-over and I'll thank you for it!" she shot back at me._

"_Where's the capt- where's Duran?" It still felt a little weird to call him by his first name, but we'd have to get used to it. We were technically equals now after all, even though I doubted we'd ever really feel that way._

"_The captain is working," Sonder said, turning away from his new friend. "He said he would be joining us shortly!"_

_Erinys and Sildri were talking together, heads down so we couldn't hear. Erinys said something to Sildri that made the Night Elf woman burst into giggles, and I hoped to all the gods they weren't talking about me. "Who knows," Erinys said, leaning over the table. "Maybe he forgot to clean his rifle for the fifth time today."_

"_Working? On _New Year's?" _Well, at least he'd given _us_ the time off._

_Erinys shrugged;_ what are you going to do?_ which said it all really._

_Suddenly, a voice blared next to me like a foghorn. "Elias, my friend!"_

"_I'm sat right next to you Sonder, geez!" I shouted, and tried to rub the echoes out of my head._

_Sonder ignored me and took a swig of whatever was left of his goblet. "Friends, I have been thinking."_

_I couldn't hear it over the noise, but I could _see_ Erinys sigh across the table from me. "Gods, I wish you wouldn't," she intoned._

"_Ignore the gloomy one! Moonglade!"_

"_What about Moonglade?" Sildri and I asked at the same time._

"_We should go!" Sonder said happily._

"_Third time tonight," Erinys said. "Again with this."_

"_We should?" Sildri asked, staring at Sonder like he had suggested we all do something like jump off a high cliff._

"_We should!" Sonder said solemnly. "This is your people's festival, is it not?"_

"_Well, yeah…" Sildri said, and I could see that little shift in her shoulders which said; _I'd really rather not.

"_So we should celebrate it in your people's home!" Sonder looked around at us all and beamed. You really couldn't hate the man._

_Erinys pointed a finger at him across the table. "Sonder is it possible," she said, "that you keep asking to go because you've never been?"_

"_Nor have you, are you not curious?"_

"_It's a grove with some trees in it," Sildri said flatly, clearly unimpressed with her ancestral faith. "You'd be underwhelmed, trust me."_

"_It's a good idea."_

_I turned as Duran sat down next to me, keeping me between Sonder and himself. He was still dressed like a dwarf, but some of the trimmings on his coat were green, and his jacket might have been tanned red, or just leather. I wasn't going to ask. He had a tankard full of something like the rest of us, but sounded dead sober as usual._

"_It is?" Sildri, Erinys and I asked at the same time, not a little disbelieving._

"_It is!" Sonder said._

"_Yes. Right now," the old Dwarf said, and took a long drink. "Tonight at least," he repeated. "But first. Come with me."_

_I glanced across at Erinys, who just shrugged. Sildri was the first to stand, walking over the table to me and grabbing my hand as the others followed suit. Sonder lagged behind for a second, but made pacifying noises to the woman he had been speaking too and then followed us, as we followed Duran away from the square, and the party that showed no signs of slowing down._

* * *

_The noise was still there. A background hum of happy shouting and music and noise as we left the feasts behind and moved into the mage's square next-door. Maybe it was my imagination but I could have sworn that the noise dropped down fast the second we passed under the archway into Stormwind's magical quarter. Even here though the signs of the celebration were around; doors and windows hung with tinsel and small enchanted sparklers, windows glowing with faint coloured light._

"_Sooooo…" Sildri started, when we had walked for a few minutes._

"_Are ye sober?" Duran asked, and he sounded deadly serious as he did so._

"_Getting that way suddenly," Erinys said. We glanced around each other and I could see the frowns and worry there._

"_Sober enough," I replied, and felt a little of that worry myself._

_Duran stared at us all with cold eyes. I'd seen them before. When we'd failed a mission, or screwed up, or any of a dozen other things. I braced myself for what was about to come as Duran opened his mouth and spoke._

"_Aye, well ye'd better fix that fast lads and lasses, because there's no decent beer in Northrend."_

_For a minute the words didn't register. I didn't know what he'd said. Something about beer? And north-_

_Erinys swept me up into a bear-hug so tight I almost couldn't breath, and she was laughing and shouting with glee. "YES! YES! HAH!" She dropped me and turned to Sonder. "WE DID IT!" they both shouted practically at the same time, and hugged, laughing into the night air._

"_My gods…" It took me a second to realise I was the one who had said it._

"_The Old Man delivered the news to me tonight. Well done lad. You deserve it." Duran put his hand out, and I shook it without thinking. I felt like I was floating in mid-air._

_I was about to reply when hands dragged me away and around, and Sildri kissed me on the lips. I ignored the laughs from Erinys and Sonder and closed my eyes and kissed back. She disengaged, and smiled. We were all smiling. "Northrend," she said, like it was a dream._

_Northrend. The front-line. The tip of the sword. The best and the brightest only. Second-raters need not apply. For any civilian in Stormwind it might be madness, but for the guilds it was confirmation. Official recognition that you were the best, that you were worthy to be first on the ground and carve a path for the rest of the Alliance. The chance to maybe carve legends, too._

"_When…" I cleared my throat. "When do we leave?" I asked._

_Duran shrugged. He wasn't celebrating, exactly, but I could see his shoulders shaking just a little. "A week or so, when we get the boats and supplies ready. The pathfinders already on-continent will meet us when we land."_

"_Just a week?" Erinys asked._

"_Aye, one week," the Dwarf said. "So enjoy it."_

"_I think we can manage that," I replied, still smiling._

"_If only there was some kind of party going on we could begin with…" Duran said, stroking his beard._

"_First round on me," I replied._

_The rest of the night passed in a euphoric haze, time passing so slowly it felt like treacle, a perfect night that didn't seem to want to end. We went back to the party and ate and drank enough for twice our number. Sonder finally convinced us all his idea really was a good one and we made plans to visit Moonglade the next night. I danced with Sildri and the others in Cathedral square as the final fire-show of the night exploded above us, covering the night-sky in colour one last time before the sun wiped it all away. We all went back up to the tower and stared down at the city below us, and the other people walking the streets, all the other people who were nowhere near as lucky or as blessed to be us. To have friends like us, or a calling like ours, or a destiny like the one we _knew_ we had, up there in the far north where legends were just waiting for us to come and make them real._

_We were invincible._

* * *

"Are you awake?"

I opened one eye and the world came into focus slowly. I could recognise her though, I always could. "Sildri? Is everything okay?" I sat up in the bed and felt cold as the air grabbed me out of the warm blanket, and I wished for once I had slept with a shirt on.

"Something's going on at SI:7. Aaron wants us awake and over there as soon as we're together. If- Elias, are you alright?"

There was a buzzing in my head I couldn't place. I put a hand against my forehead but it didn't help. Something there that hadn't been there the night before. I couldn't place it. I…

_Wait._

I looked up at Sildri, and she stared back down at me. The light was above her head, streaming down around her like a white waterfall. "Sildri?"

"What is it?" she asked.

_The wind was cold on that tower. I'd brought up a cloak to.._

"It was a red cloak."

I could see the confusion on her face and without thinking I reached out a hand to grasp hers. "It was cold and you only had a dress, so we shared mine," I said quietly, and waited. I didn't have to wait long.

Sildri's hands flew to her face and covered her mouth, her eyes wide as dinner-plates as she drew a shocked breath so fast I could hear it. For a second the both of us stood there in the cold guildhall bedroom.

Finally, it was her who broke the silence. "You went to…" she didn't have to finish the sentence.

"Yes," I said. "It's coming back slowly, but…"

"Why?" she asked, half a whisper.

I reached for her other hand and held it, brought them together between us. "Because I couldn't take not knowing anymore." She didn't say anything, and I went on. "I meant what I said on that tower." I felt a lump in my throat and I powered through it before it reached up and cut off my voice. "I've always meant it, even when I was too much of a coward to remember it."

It would have been too much to expect her to leap forward into my arms, and she didn't. Instead she leaned forward and put her arms around me, her eyes looking into mine like I remembered from that night I had got back. "When the rest of it comes back," she whispered into my ear. "find me again." She disengaged, moving back, and my hand slipping out of hers was the last contact between us. She smiled at me, and it was a real one again. "Now get dressed," her eyes ran across me. "Duty calls."

She left as silently as she had arrived, leaving me sat there, still in bed. I felt elated, euphoric, happier than I had felt in years. I felt born again.

If I had been thinking clearly, I'd have thought about what could bring Aaron to make an emergency meeting at such short notice.

Should have realised my feeling couldn't last.


	20. The Greatest of Feasts - Part 1

The dress uniform felt horribly uncomfortable, the rough leather patches on the jacket chafing against my skin and the soft velvet feeling eerily slimy somehow. Like the entire thing had been coated in a thin layer of dust and grease that hadn't been quite washed off before they'd handed it to me. I wasn't the only one feeling it either, judging by the looks on Sildri and Duran's faces. Only Sara looked like she was wearing hers comfortably.

"Well it's been a few years since you put yours on right?" she said as I tried in vain to adjust the cuffs on the long-sleeved jacket so the gold pins wouldn't prick my wrists.

"Point taken," I replied grudgingly. I'd never liked dress uniforms, even the Irregulars'. Red on gold was a fine colour for a hand-sized crest you could sow onto your jacket, or for a flag for some poor sod to carry in a parade. But a uniform made out of those colours just made me feel like I was wearing a giant mirror with blood running down it. Nice thought.

"Gods this feels weird," Erinys said. "I think I was twenty when I put this thing on last. It makes me feel old."

"Nostalgic," Sonder corrected her. He looked perfectly at home in his, like a giant blue mountain covered in gold curtains.

There was a knock at the door, and Sara swung it open to show the man on the other side. I resisted the urge to chuckle.

"Don't even think about it," Aaron said, glowering at each of us in turn.

"Vickers this is the first time seeing you has really cheered me up," Erinys said with a smirk. "For a second I thought a living shadow had walked into the room.

My gods, SI:7 had a dress uniform even worse than ours. The material looked top-class, but nothing would ever make black-on-black look anything other than like you were trying far too hard to be mysterious. Even Aaron looked awkward in it.

"So when are you going to fills us in?" I asked. As I watched, Aaron moved with intense purpose over to the small table by the now-dark fire. Without pausing or asking permission he poured himself a shot of the closest bottle he could reach, and downed it. I caught a glance from Duran and could see his expression was the same as my own. _What the hell?_

"Everything," Aaron said, "just became a lot more awkward." He threw a hand behind him. "Let's get going. We have a ride waiting for us."

I exchanged glances with the others. "We're not meeting them in the Irregulars' basement?" I asked. He knew I meant the council overseeing us.

He nodded. "No, we aren't."

"Then who?" Erinys asked. She'd never had any patience for grandstanding.

"Their bosses."

* * *

"I don't like this."

"I know."

"I don't like it at all."

"For the usual reasons, or…"

"Seriously Elias," Erinys said with a frown. "You remember what happened last time we were here?"

I think all of us were feeling it, standing there in the small grassy courtyard. When we'd left the Irrregular's guildhall there had been horses and small carriages there waiting for us, and they hadn't taken us to SI:7 headquarters, or even to one of the grand old buildings that noblemen usually sat and met their guests in. They'd taken us to the Royal Keep. I'd looked in what had probably been total shock at Aaron, who had just nodded. When he said awkward he hadn't been kidding.

When they built Stormwind they built it as a symbol. Of human power and ingenuity. Of safety and wealth in a land that still had roving bands of Orcs. It was meant to say _we're here and we are not leaving, so do your worst._

And in case the worst happened, the Royal Keep had been built as the city's final bastion, its last line of defence. The outer walls that separated it from the rest of the city were thick enough that a grown man couldn't put his arms around one, and tall enough that they brought the sunset a little earlier to Stormwind than to the land around it. Where the rivers that separated the city districts reached the Keep and turned into moats, they became feet deeper, and the guards that patrolled the walls and gates always had swords sharpened and bows ready even when the rest of the city militia was reduced to using a grindstone every few weeks. Every area of the thing was partitioned, inside gates and porticullises dropping down to secure or contain whatever threat made it inside. In living memory no Orc raiding party had gotten close and lived to get back out. The last time I'd been here had been for…

Had been for…

"Elias?"

I rubbed my eyes to try and erase the blurriness that had suddenly attacked them, and looked to my left to see Sildri staring back at me. Out of all of us she wasn't wearing the Irregulars' uniform. While the rest of us were technically members of the Irregulars, Sildri was a Priestess of the Moon seconded to them, and so her formal wear was a white dress and ornate silver decorations. Of course it looked great on her. "I'm fine. Almost had something for a second there, but it's gone."

"Let it come back slowly," she said.

"Speaking of slowly what the hell is taking them so long?" Erinys asked, pacing the grass. She'd already worn a small path into it.

The courtyard wasn't really a courtyard. It was actually inside, on one of the upper floors. Someone had taken the time and energy to transport soil, grass, flowers and even a couple of trees up an entire level of the Royal Keep and lay out a small garden, just for the noblemen who used it. It seemed crazy.

"Just letting us know who's in charge," Duran said, playing with the small ceremonial sword that came with the dress uniform. The things weren't even sharpened, but the old dwarf needed something to do with his hands. All of us were just a little nervous sitting there, surrounded by all the power of the place. The stonework was small and incredibly polished, and the ceilings and walls were decorated with carvings that looked microscopic. Money and power practically dripped from the walls.

"Like we didn't fucking know already," Erinys said, and I could see it was getting to her the most. Maybe even with the grass underfoot and the fact that the room was bigger than most houses, it was just a little too much like a cage for her. The fact that there were two guards on the door out watching us probably wasn't helping.

Finally after what seemed like hours of waiting, something happened.

"Mr Conray and your little team! It's good to see you all again!"

I looked over at the voice, then looked slightly down. It was Diley Cogwrench. "Sir," I said, more in surprise than greeting. He had changed from the last time we had met. Back in Stormwind his clothes had been spotted with grease and burns, his head practically covered by the huge technical glasses he wore. Now his raiment was spotless, the leather painted with wheels and gears, and his shock of red hair was standing almost straight up, covered with tiny silver ringlets that if I looked closely would probably be gear-shaped too.

"Welcome to the Keep! I hear it's been some time for you," he said, and shot a glance across at Erinys, almost too fast for me to say. "The library is still excellent you will find. Alas, the food is still awful."

I knew she wouldn't say it, but we probably all thought it for her: _Asshole._ "It's a surprise to see you again sir." I reached a hand down and he shook it, and I felt a small crackle of static. The gnome looked like he was running on full-power, his hand almost vibrating in mine.

"I must admit yer honour, we're curious as to what this is about exactly," Duran said, standing and giving a small bow.

Diley looked up into mine with a crazy gnome grin, and I could see lights dancing in his eyes. "Your mission, generally. It's end, specifically."

"What?" Sara blurted before she could stop herself.

"Excuse me?" I asked as the others all practically froze to the spot.

Cogwrench went on like we hadn't said anything. "…down to you and your team of course, couldn't have done it without your efforts. We'd had an amazing breakthough, simply amazing. Like gears winding bigger gears we've done from good findings to great results. Simply great. Everything just fell into place when we made contact." He tried to slap me on the back but being a gnome could only manage to find my arm. "You can rest easy Elias!" he said jovially, and I could hear the excitement in his voice. "Your work just became so much easier! Come, come!" Without waiting to see whether we were following, he turned on his heels and walked towards the door, the two guards parting before him like the river, and this time they stayed at the walls.

I looked back at the others, feeling like I'd just been punched in the head. The air around me felt faintly unreal, like I was coming back to the world from a dream and I hadn't quite woken up yet. _We're done?_

I didn't realise I'd said it out loud until Sara replied. "I…maybe?" she shrugged. "Maybe we should go after him?"

Sonder was already moving, his hooves making sharp tapping noises as they hit the smooth stone floors. Before I could react he had done what Cogwrench couldn't, and slapped me jovially on the back. Bones might have snapped. "Elias! You know what this means!"

I did and I didn't. I pushed Sonder's huge muscular arm from my shoulder and looked over at Aaron, who looked incredibly out-of-place in his all-black ensemble. A dozen thoughts were running through my head. The third construct still unaccounted for. What Saga had told me on a night that felt like weeks ago no. Saga herself. Something else about Saga that I couldn't quite remember. "What the hell?" I settled for asking.

The spy stared back at me and just nodded. "Go after him, he'll…someone will explain the rest."

We walked past the guards. At least almost all of us did.

"Hey, whoa!"

I turned as I heard the voice and saw Sara staring at the guards' backs. Almost silently they'd moved back into place as we had left, blocking the corridor off from the small courtyard, and the people still in it.

"Hey guys, do you mind?" I asked the two guards. They didn't even budge, or turn around. They certainly didn't move as from the other side of them Erinys stood with her arms crossed and a look of annoyance on her face, Aaron stood slightly behind her.

"Leave it, go," Vickers said casually. I didn't buy it. The guards didn't have their weapons drawn and pointed at her, but I could see their right hands were much closer to their sword hilts than they had been a second ago. "You've got a council to meet."

"Not without the rest of my team," I said, and reached a hand up to try and grab a guard by the shoulder when…I felt a strong hand drag me backwards, and my grip went through air as Sonder pulled me away.

Erinys just shrugged, staring at me from the other side of the two faceless silent guards. "We'll catch up," she said. I recognised that stare. Cold and dead, it was the same eyes she had stared at me with from the other side of the bars in Stormwind's jail. She swung on Aaron, fast enough to make the guards twitch the tiniest amount. "Won't we?"

"Sure," Aaron said, glancing from her to me and back again.

I felt a cold wind breathe across the back of my neck as suddenly I remembered what Erinys had said, the night I had gone to have my memories fixed. _This doesn't end for me the same way…_ "Catch up fast then, alright?" I said, and then turned away. I could see Duran nodding his head slightly, and I knew he thought I'd done the right thing. It didn't make me feel any better though.

* * *

"Mr Conray! It has been some time. And this must be the rest of your team. Please, everyone. You have done a magnificent job."

The same people, the same faces. But this time instead of being sat around a dark and grimy table in the basement of the Irregular's guildhall, dressed all in dark cloaks and covered in shadow they were surrounded by the blazing glory of Stormwind's royalty, dressed in the regalia of their people. Kozrin Hrazal walked towards me all smiles, arms outstretched like he was greeting a long-lost brother. The Draeni representative of my mission grabbed my hand before I could react and shook it, almost grinding the bones. Goddamnit, didn't any Draeni know his own strength.

"Nice to…ah…nice to see you again too."

"Come, have a drink. Celebrate!"

I felt like I'd fallen through the cracks somewhere and gone to an alternate world where everything was designed to confuse me. I looked around the brightly-lit room, what could have been a grand hall in any other keep but here was probably just a meeting room, or just somewhere you went on the way to somewhere else. Windows that stretched to the ceiling high above with white marble borders covered an entire wall, looking down onto the rest of Stormwind. We had to be at least three or four stories above the rest of the city. It was magnificent. A long oak table took up much of the room, and the rest was covered in white statues and golden scrollwork. Diley Cogwrench had found a bottle of something that probably cost more than a Guardsman made in a year, and was already pouring for the others in the room. "Celebrate what?" I asked.

"Your victory!" the gnome counsellor replied happily, pushing glasses of wine into our hands. The Draeni lifted his and I did the same automatically. The large humanoid and the small gnome drained their glasses in a single gulp. "And a most outstanding one too." I looked behind me as I heard the murmurs and rustles of people moving around, and turned to see servants and others trying to hoist drinks onto the others. The entire thing looked like a party, but for what I had no idea. The only faces missing were Aaron, who was probably trying to keep Erinys from blowing up at him, Taelan Lightweave, who was probably still under guard awaiting deportation, and Sildri's mother, who was probably waiting in the shadows to ambush and stab me.

"Could you start at the beginning please, maybe?" I pleaded.

"Of course, my apologies," Kozrin said. "The mission is over. You have won." He made it sounded as dull as a weather report, and it took a second for me to realise what he had said.

What. "What?" _What?_

Kozrin smiled at me like a kindly old uncle trying to get a valuable lesson into the head of his dumb nephew. "The third and final construct was apprehended and…deconstructed…last night. The threat is over, and the remains are firmly in our hands. A total victory."

"Where was the abominable thing found, if you don't mind me asking councilman?"

Kozrin looked from me down to Duran as the old Dwarf approached us both. "Right under our noses, Mr Copperweight. Right under _your_ nose, to be more specific. The construct was disguised as a visiting dignitary to the Irregular's guildhall itself."

The room swam in front of me, so hard I had to check to make sure I hadn't accidentally drank the glass in my hand, or the rest of the bottle. "In the guildhall?" I asked, as clearly as I could, and really, really hoped that I had misheard.

Kozrin nodded.

That was it, the worrying little thorn in my head that had been bothering me earlier. When I finally went to sleep last night the thing had been sitting in the common room, eyes closed and doing a very convincing impression of a sleeping guildsman. But from waking up this morning to leaving the quarters, I hadn't seen Saga's construct at all. I didn't need to connect anymore dots. "Did it…" I coughed as suddenly my throat didn't work the way I wanted it to. "Did it resist?"

"No, no we were very fortunate. We were forewarned and very much forearmed. The creature was disabled and…deconstructed…without any fuss, any fuss at all."

_How the hell? Dozens of people walked through that hall while it was here and nobody suspected a goddamn thing! How the hell did they _know? Sometime between dawn and dusk it had been removed, with all of us sleeping less than five rooms away, and none of us had heard or seen a damn thing. _How did they know?_

"That's excellent," I said, and tried to sound like I meant it. "Really…umm…reassuring." I steeled myself and cleared my throat. "How was it found?" I asked, and held my breath as I waited for the answer.

Diley smiled. "That, Mr Conray, is the final and most exciting part of this day." His eyes glittered like jewels. "We were assisted. By a very…interesting individual. One who it turned out had roughly the same interest in catching these constructs as we did."

No, it was no good. I was only getting more confused. _Why would Saga help find her own…_

_Wait…_

"Assisted by who? Who?" I asked.

The smile got a little wider, and my memory was suddenly working with the speed of one of the gnome's engines, as clear as a crystal bowl, and it was thinking back with that speed and clarity to the hunt we had made for the second construct in Ironforge, and what Saga had told me there…

_The constructs we're hunting are being controlled? Directed?_

_Yes._

_By someone like you?_

_You are close, Cz Conray. It- Wait, pronouns. He is the same in some ways, but not as you think. As a Draeni to you as he is to me._

_Different shapes, same thoughts?_

_The same thoughts once, but no longer._

The same thoughts.

But no longer.

Paranoia. It had to be. Weeks spent hunting and killing enemies stronger and faster than any man, spent bouncing from city to forest to city to forest. Fatigue, that was all it was. I'd walk through the door and Saga would be standing there all smiles, with the last corrupted construct dead there, and we'd all finish the drinks set out for us and go home happy and rewarded and free. Fatigue and paranoia was all the slight shaking in my hands meant, the slight panic I could feel in the back of my head. That was all.

Or was it. _Or was it._

"Come and meet him," Diley said, and almost on cue the other councilmen turned as well. Servants swung the doors at the end of the hall open, and the two councilmen and other assorted clerks and hangers-on began to go through in small groups. I watched as the others went through. Even though the windows looked twice as thick as regular ones and the fires were blazing in three different hearths in the room, I suddenly felt ice-cold. The sword at my side was a worthless piece of iron, and nobody else had anything better.

"Are you coming, Mr Conray?" Kozrin asked, looking back at me. The room behind him was well lit, but I couldn't quite see past him for the rest of the people already in. I almost jumped when the voice came through clear as a bell from behind the Draeni. It was Sara. She sounded happy, excited.

"_ELIAS! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!"_

Kozrin Hraza ljust smiled, and walked away into the room, leaving me alone there in the majestic dining hall. I could have turned and walked away. Or called to the others, told them there was somewhere we needed to be before we could finish. Instead I went inside, after my friends. The wood of the doors felt cold and brittle to the touch and didn't make me feel any better.

Neither did what I found on the other side.

* * *

Part 2 tomorrow. Be here!

~Cobray


	21. A Cold World I

"_So you're the new guys?"_

_We shook hands, although the thickness of the gloves we were both wearing it was more like bumping fists. Goddamn it was cold. They had told us and kitted us out as best they could but I could still feel the chill on the edge of my skin where the cloth didn't quite meet, or the armour didn't have wool stuffed under it. It teased and plucked at me as we got off the boat. Goddamn it was cold._

"_Let's not talk so much out here, we already have some buildings set up with fires, thank the Light. We'll talk more there."_

_Buildings might have been putting it generously. There were a few of them but they were miserable-looking things, stone blocks piled together haphazardly and then the gaps filled with pebbles and mortar. Only a few of them had windows, and all of them were dark, impossible to see inside. If they were homes they were bad ones. We walked across the square as gently as could, frozen grass crunching underfoot everywhere. I hadn't expected that, and mentioned it, just for something to say. It felt like if I stayed quiet for long enough my lips would freeze together._

"_Don't be surprised, Northrend isn't exactly what the heralds and papers say it is. That's good and bad. In summer there're leaves on the trees and everything, you might even think you were in Silverpine or someplace. Then the cold hits and everything freezes solid overnight. That's the best time to build though. Not even the undead come out much when the white walls come down."_

"_White walls?" I asked as we walked._

"_It's what we call the first few days of winter here," the man said. "It _rolls_ down from the mountains, and we're on the coast so it takes a while to get to us. It's like a tidal-wave when it hits, one day everything is a little chilly but relatively okay, then sometime during the night; whomp. You wake up and everything – _everything – _is frozen solid. We don't even bother trying to skirmish or fight in winter."_

_I could believe it. Even just walking across the field the small outpost was located on felt exhausting. I looked ahead to the low stone building we were walking towards and could see something red and flickering through a glass window. Our escort knocked once on a door that looked like oak older than my grandfather, and then swung it open. We piled through._

"_Alright, take a seat and get out of those things, we have some spares you can use until you get measured. Don't expect them to fit, but they're warm enough." The outside might have been solid stone and mortar but the inside was different. The walls were hidden by what looked like yards of heavy cloth or hides, and the floors were the same. Wooden beams had small lanterns or – something I'd never have expected – small pails filled with soil and flowers hanging from them. The entire thing looked like an inn, or one of the Orc homesteads I'd glanced through occasionally back in the Kingdoms. The man swung the door shut again behind us and instantly the cold retreated away like a switch being flipped. Facing one wall were a bunch of chairs and long seats covered in more cloth, and set into the stone a fireplace blazed with light. I could hear us all letting out sighs of contentment as the warm air and heat from the roaring fire enfolded us. _

_Our guide laughed. "Yeah, that's the face everyone here made too." He started tugging off his overcoat and hood. Underneath it he had long hair that fell almost to his shoulders, and a black beard that looked like a miniature version of the all-consuming hair that Dwarves had. Underneath it he had green eyes, and an easy smile. He reached out a hand and I shook it. The skin felt old, leathery, but the man it was attached to couldn't have been older than thirty. I wondered what had happened to make it that way. "I'm Gaston Fanes, I'll be your captain while you're here, although don't expect me to act like it. We're a little short on formality with the real bosses so far away." _

"_Elias Conray," I said, and let go of his hand. In the back of the house someone was coming down the stairs with a boatload of cloth in their arms._

"_Sonder Kolram."_

_Gaston shook the Draeni's hand and smiled. "Should I make a joke about you not looking like a paladin? Your brother says hello, by the way."_

"_He is here?" the Draeni asked in surprise._

"_He's at the other end of the continent, in the Boreans. Not likely to run in to him, but you never know. Ah, captain Copperweight." The man turned to Duran. "Nice to have you on board."_

"_Glad to be here captain."_

"_You'll be gladder when you've got some drink in you I'm guessing? The seas looked rough coming in."_

"_Aye you're not wrong, and I wouldn't say no."_

"_That at least I can provide." Fanes turned to the next member of the team. From looking down to looking up, in this case. "Ms Heartfield, of course. I've heard good things about you, hope to see a few more while we're up here."_

_Erinys grinned. Just a little one though. "Count on it."_

"_It turns out your father knows mine, and he wrote me about you."_

_The grin turned into a mortified look of horror. "Oh gods, did he really? I'll kill him. I'll _kill_ him."_

_Gaston laughed. "Don't worry so much. My dad did the same when I was in your position. Family, huh?" Finally he turned to the last new arrival._

"_Greetings," Sildri said, and put her hand forward. It was still gloved. "Call me Sildri, it'll be easier," she said with a smile._

"_Welcome aboard Miss- Sildri. Always a pleasure to have another healer up here."_

"_You didn't bring your own?" Sildri asked._

"_We've had…we had a few," Gaston said, and the way he slid away from the topic made me stand just a little closer to Sildri's side. The man clapped his hands and waved around the hallway. If the outside looked like a hovel the inside was a wonder. The only signs of the insane cold of the outside were the windows coloured a solid white, and the slight howl of the wind coming from the door. If this was Northrend in spring I couldn't imagine what winter would be like. This place would be our home, thank the Light it seemed a good one. "Welcome to Landing Point," Gaston said with a flourish around him. "Some civilian will probably give it a different-"_

"_And better," a Night Elf muttered from the seat he was sleeping in._

"_-_obviously much worse_ name once they get here, but for now it's us here on the south-east coast and another company on the west. A couple of hundred shivering bastards stuck on building and guarding duty, and another fifty even unluckier soldiering bastards whose job it is to make sure they stay alive. Occasionally we succeed. You're a part of that latter group, in case you hadn't guessed."_

_I couldn't resist a grin. Even if it was a put-on, the man's smile was infectious. "Well if you're what they had to protect them before no wonder they called for us."_

"_I like this one already," the Night Elf muttered from his sleepy throne._

"_Shut up and come have a drink," Gaston said, waving an arm behind him where the table nearest the fire had already been piled with plates and mugs, and I could vaguely see meat poking out from steaming platters. After the long – and increasingly miserable – boat-ride, it looked insanely delicious. The rest of the house was already there and packing in, and behind me I could practically feel the anticipation of Sildri and the others._

"_And welcome to Northrend, kid."_


	22. The Greatest of Feasts - Part 2

A mountain. That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw him. He was taller than anyone else in the room, even taller than the two Draeni standing there with me, and almost as broad. I felt smaller just standing near to him, and I took a step backward uncomfortably, like I was trying to get a better look at the top of something far in the distance. He – and there was no doubt it was a him, in the same inhuman but shaped way that Saga was a she – stood there looking down at us, arms that looked like the size of other people's torsos crossed in front of him, silent. He stared down at us and I could see eyes that could have been just a deep grey or could have been metal orbs, and points of electric blue light looking out at us instead of pupils.

For a second it looked like someone had dressed him in armour the colour of old steel, but then the massive creature shifted, in the banquet hall that now felt tiny and constricted around me, and I realised that it wasn't the case as the 'armour' around his joints moved and warped imperceptibly. It was just metal. Living metal skin, shaped by something to look like armour.

"You are the one."

The voice came out a low rumble, with some strange vibration in the back of the throat that sounded like it was coming from a long way away, or echoing out of a deep chasm. It didn't sound dead, like an undead voice-box did. It simply sounded…un-alive. And unimpressed.

I didn't have to ask which one he meant. Cogwrench and the others had dropped enough hints. I wondered if I should bow. "Yeah, I am," I said. I could _feel_ the others watching me in the room. The gnome leader and his Draeni counterpart with interest, and the rest of the team around me. I glanced around and saw knew exactly as little as I did. I caught a shrug from Sara. _What the hell._ "Who are you?"

The metallic came sounded from miles away. "I guard the gates of the stars. I protect the armouries of the gods. Call me such. Orion."

_Hello. How are you._ I kept my mouth shut as small feet pattered against the marble floor, and Cogwrench stepped forward between us. I barely took my eyes from the steel behemoth in front of me.

"Orion here travelled a long way," the gnome said, the enthusiasm in his voice tempered with a little more gravity and respect than usual. "Hunting."

"Hunting," I replied, and waited.

True to form the gnome took the opportunity and kept talking, as Orion stared down at the pair of us. Saga flashed into my mind again and I remembered the first time we had met her. She had worn the same face, the same stance. Not arrogance or boredom, just a flat expressionless waiting. "It appears our guest had the same goal as us, albeit his solution a little more…terminal."

I remembered what Cogwrench had said outside. "The constructs, you said the last one was found?"

A blue shape loomed as Kozrin stepped forward. Even with his height, the Draeni was still shorter than the new arrival. "Indeed. Hiding under our very noses." He looked down at me and it looked like there was something in his eyes. Something…

"Where?" I asked.

But the moment was lost as Cogwrench kept talking. "Spying on your own guild, no less!" He waved a hand at me. "Not that you could have known, the _thing_ itself was very well-hidden! But with our new friend here helping it was sniffed out soon enough!"

No. I had to be sure. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

"It was hiding in the Irregular's guild," Kozrin said, still looking at me, his face almost as expressionless as the thing that called itself Orion. "Disguised as one of your guild-mates."

* * *

Strange things happen to people who spend too much time together. Even stranger things when the greater amount of that time is spent fighting and killing. I've never been able to put it into words, or at least not well enough to explain it to someone who's never taken up arms. It's more than just being comrades, or being close. More than knowing how your squad reacts when there's a threat or how you and your team will know exactly where to move when the shit well and truly hits the fan. It's like a little part of their brain gets copied onto your own, and you get a window view into their mind of how they're thinking and why, and they get a window into yours. That's why guild teams are never more than a dozen or so anymore, why good skirmishers are treasured like gold dust. Why the guilds exist, even though the human kingdoms have a perfectly fine regular army. It isn't magic – maybe – but it's pretty damn close.

Right then, when Kozrin Hrazel said those words with that little expression on his face, I knew that around the room Sonder and Duran and the others were putting their glasses down and making sure their hands were free.

"Right under our noses?" I repeated. I didn't care about his answer, I just wanted him to keep talking. My brain was working fast, trying to out-think the thing in front of me. Because right then I knew that was what I had to do.

_The one they found is Saga's construct. If this…Orion came from the same place almost certainly, from what he said they'd have the same mission. Saga mentioned friends, similar to her. Maybe he's one of them? But why would he destroy his own ally's soldiers? Was Saga lying to me? I've had to drag information out of her before, what else is she not telling me? Are _all_ these machines corrupted, even hers? But it had chances to kill us before, could have slit our throats at night and left, one more set of bodies to join the Archmage and the militia. So if it wasn't corrupted did this thing make a mistake?_

"That's…that's good to hear," I said, and tried to put into it all of the relief I didn't feel. I looked from the smiling Diley Cogwrench to the massive steel beast that called itself Orion. Every few seconds blue light would arc across his body, tracing lines deep in his armour/skin. The name fit, at least. "That means the job's over, right?"

"Almost," Kozrin said, and didn't elaborate. Someone else did that for him.

"The three servitors you call constructs were puppets," Orion intoned, voicing bouncing across the room. "There is a controller, a master."

"So you see, your job is not quite done yet," the Draeni said. He didn't look too pleased about it.

_This is it. _"What kind of master? If I'm- If you're going to be hunting this with our help, what are we looking for?"

"In a moment," Kozrin said. He turned to the rest of the room, the adjutants and hangers-on that were staring up at Orion and trying to look like they belonged there. "Out," the Draeni said. Without a word the others left, and now the only people in the room were the four of us, the guards at the doors, our two superiors, and the steel mountain himself. "Please, continue," Kozrin said.

Orion nodded once, slowly, and went on, his eyes burning a hole in my face. "The final enemy is beyond the simple machines you have fought. Cunning and vicious, strong and quick. But unlike them."

"Tell me," I said, and held my breath for the answer.

"Not a creature of steel and iron, as I and these constructs," Orion said. "One of earth and flesh." He went on for a minute, intoning words I didn't need to hear and was no longer listening to.

_Saga, he's talking about Saga. They're not allies. They're enemies._

_They're hunting _each other_, and one of them is killing human officials into the bargain._

* * *

"Mr Conray, are you distracted?"

I looked up at Kozrin Hrazel and shook my head as he and Orion stared down at me, and Diley Cogwrench stared up. "Sorry sir," I said, "just thinking about everything I've been told. It's a lot to take in."

Cogwrench laughed. "Hah! That ain't the half of it."

My skin felt like it was covered in ants, biting every inch of my flesh. I could feel something vague pounding in the back of my skull as I tried to hold it back and keep my body under control. I knew exactly what it was: Fear.

It was him. It had to be. If Saga had wanted us dead she could have chosen any single moment we were defenceless or asleep and taken us all there and then. A set of dead guild soldiers to join the wizards and militia it had taken already. More than that, she had saved mine and Taelan's lives when she could have let us die, and helped us hunt down and unmask the second construct. Short of her having a plan that involved destroying her own soldiers and keeping her enemies alive, there was only one more explanation.

One construct was still out there, Orion was its master, and I was standing inches away from him, with the only weapons in the room in the belts of the guards much farther than that.

_Get out. Get out get out get out._ "I think I might need to take all this on-board," I said, trying to sound as casual as possible. I looked up at Orion's expressionless face and wondered what was behind it as I spoke to him. That green light and flashing madness? Or did he only use it in his constructs? "If you're here to help us we're grateful. This master you're talking about sounds dangerous."

"I am. It is," Orion said in that flat echoing monotone.

I looked across at Cogwrench and Hrazel. "Sirs, if you'd give us some time?"

The Draeni nodded; "Certainly," and gestured behind him to the doors. "Figure things out, come back to us with a plan once you're ready."

I swallowed, and it sounded like a roar in my eyes, so loud I was surprised the others in the room couldn't hear it. "We won't let you down sir."

"You haven't yet," the Draeni said, as motioned for the others to follow, and walked away. One of the guard flanking the huge oak door stood aside to open it to the room beyond, and as we filed through the last look I had was of the Draeni, the gnome and Orion, looking at each other and talking quietly. Then the wood shut behind us, and I could see no more.

* * *

Sara went first.

"What the _fuck?"_ As long as I had known her I hadn't known her to swear lightly. The word came out of her mouth ugly and scared, and she stared at me with an expression somewhere between panic and confusion. "Did I catch all of that right? Did I-"

Duran's voice cut through her like a knife. "Where's Erinys?"

"She was kept back with Vickers."

The Dwarf spoke fast and low. "We need to find her, _now_." He looked around at the rest of us. "Ye're all on the same page I presume?"

Sonder just nodded. At his side, his hands were clenching and unclenching silently. _He did that before. In the citadel. In the cold-_ No. Not now.

"I was hoping I had misunderstood," Sildri said.

"You didn't," I replied, as softly but insistently as I could.

She sighed. "What a shame."

"What now?" Sara asked.

"We leave-"

"We get out-"

Duran and I both stopped talking. Great minds think alike, and so do soldiers who've lived long enough. I could feel a prickling at my back and turned around, but the oak doors were still shut. "We leave," I said again. I was almost whispering, and had to stop the words from rushing out unintelligibly. "We get Erinys, get out of the keep, find a way to contact Saga and think about what to do next."

"Tell Aaron," Sildri said quickly.

"Yes." _Yes._ I remembered back, to the night I had cracked the dam on my old memories. Aaron had been arguing with someone about us. About meeting someone new. No need to ask now who it was. "He knew about this and he wasn't sure about it. He knows something isn't right. He knows about Saga, he can vouch for us."

"Vouch for us about _what_?" Sara asked.

"Vouch that it isn't our word against that thing in there," Duran said darkly, jerking a thumb backwards to the doors. I looked at them and frowned. Something was bothering me, but I didn't…

"We didn't come in this way," Sildri said.

I looked around and for a second I didn't realise what she meant. Then suddenly the cold prickle on the back of neck went away and was replaced with cold knowledge; she was right. We'd entered the banquet hall through a long corridor lined with windows. Now I looked around and while it was still a corridor it wasn't the same one. We'd come out through a different door, not one that led back to the outer keep, one that had no windows and led deeper in. One that Hrazel had gestured us to go through, and of course I had followed his gesture without thinking.

"Elias…" Duran said, but didn't finish, as beyond us, down the longer candle-lit length of the stone, I heard the unmistakable clank of armour being moved and bashed against armour. I'd looked forward to that sound in the past, when it meant comrades or reinforcements. Now something about it made my blood run cold.

The men who walked up to us weren't militiamen or ceremonial patrols. They were Stormwind guard, the men trusted to be near the noblemen and royalty with weapons and armour. They didn't look happy. "Sir?"

"What?" I could feel a breath of air beside me as the others shuffled around, and I could feel them at my back.

"We have instructions from the council to help you find your quarters. Can you come with us please?" The guard was human, but the expression on his face was every bit as cold and emotionless as the one Orion had worn. Unlike Orion, that same face gave him away.

Inside I felt something tugging at my stomach and dragging me down. Suddenly faced with the gleaming metallic wall of the escort in front of us, I felt every single one of my years and missions come back to me, landing on top of my shoulders with the weight of ages. "We were just leaving," I said.

The expressions didn't change so much as an iota. Instead the guards parted, to reveal the rest of the dark corridor beyond them. I could see the gleam reflected from the swords, the ones they had just ever-so-slightly out of their sheathes. "This way, sir."

Screw it then. I looked back at the others, but we didn't need any words. I looked at the guard and said:

"No."

Without waiting for them to react I spun on my heels as fast as I could, turning back to the huge oak doors behind us. I could hear a shout from the man but ignored it as I grabbed the handles and pushed as hard as I could. The gloomy dusk of the inner corridor was erased as light from the banquet hall beyond streamed back in, blinding me as we pushed back the way we had come. I heard the guard shout again – "_STOP!_"_ – _but ignored him as I walked back into the ornate, rich, marbled lights and surfaces of the hall. The room was the same but everything else was different. The guards were still there, as were the dignitaries and the massive steel-blue shape of Orion. But instead of arranged against the walls they were standing much closer now, in a semi-circle around the door we had come through, a wall of shield and expressionless faces, spears and swords pointed directly at us.

Just because I had known it was coming didn't make it any better.

* * *

"What the fuck?"

"Mr Conray. Can you please turn arou-"

"What the _fuck?"_

"Please go with the men behind you Elias. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."

_Don't make this any harder than it has to be._ Shit. This was really bad. I looked past the wall of sharp blades and looked for… "What the hell's going on here Cogwrench?"

Hrazel was the one who stepped forward though, the Draeni councilman/diplomat/spy raising a pair of hands at us, the way you'd show a snarling dog your hands as you tried to approach it. "We're just taking precautions Elias. You know how it is. Your mission's over, we just need to make sure-"

_Make sure all loose ends are tied up._ I clenched my hands into empty fists, fingers grabbing only air. I told myself to calm down, calm down before I did something stupid that would get us all killed. I took a deep breath. "I don't know what you're thinking but I promise you you're wrong." I looked up at the massive shape of Orion, and the steel mountain stared down at me with expressionless eyes. "Or misinformed."

The mountain spoke. "He may believe it," Orion said. "It's nature is to subvert and convince. To turn."

Cogwrench shook his head sadly. "I blame myself. I told the council to send the mission out, told him to bring them back to us."

_So that's it._ Of course. ""He's told you we're corrupted," I said, looking Orion straight in his electric eyes. "He's lying."

Hrazel still stood in that conciliatory pose, but he didn't come any closer to us. "Either way it doesn't matter Elias, I promise you'll get the best help we can give you."

Just hearing the words made me feel bile rise in the back of my throat, made my skin crawl, made me feel like I was back-

* * *

_It wasn't your fault Mr Conway, everyone understands that, none of you could have known. We'll help as best we can of course but there may be repercussions from…_

* * *

I shoved the memory down before it could make me black out.

"You cannae believe this…man…so quickly, Kozrin," Duran was staying, ever calm, ever the captain. "What about

"You were seen," the Draeni shot back instantly, voice grim and low. "You think just because the warlocks don't like us much they don't give us information when they need money?" _The bar, fuck! _"And Ironforge was a disaster area when you left, and some of the smiths saw why. Are dwarves in the habit of lying to their rulers?"

Sonder stepped forward and I tried to grab him back. I couldn't budge him an inch. "We can explain!" my old friend said.

"It lived. In. Your. _Hall!"_ The spears encircling us drew in just a little tighter, and Kozrin Hrazel looked out of patience. "You are going to turn around and go with my men, where you will be held until we find a way to deal with you."

"It is subtle, insidious. There is only one way," Orion mumbled, staring down at me. "I have promised you my help, give them to me. We will trace their corruption back, to the source."

_Not like this._

"Go, Elias," Cogwrench said. I looked down at him, beyond the spears. I wondered if the glint I saw in his eyes was just the light reflecting from the polished marble of the room, or something else put there by another. Orion towered over us all, his shadow thrown across us like a black cloak.

"Go."

The spears drew tighter.

So we went.

* * *

There was no pretence or charade now. As we walked towards the centre of the keep guards kept pace with us front and behind, all with blades drawn.

"Is this it?"

I didn't know which one of them said it. "No," I replied, with as much sincerity as I felt right then. Rays of sunlight shone down from outside and I wondered if it was going to be the last light we ever saw. The trees outside shook in the wind, the leaves on their branches shaking an emerald light down into the palace. Here and there darker patches moved through, animals or birds or.

_Wait._

I stopped, so suddenly the man behind me almost ran me through with his spear. "Get moving."

"My legs don't feel so good."

"_Elias what are you doing?"_ Sara hissed at me from my side. I ignored her.

I gasped as I felt a sharp pain in my lower back and suddenly my legs really did feel weak, and I fell to my eyes. One of the guards had jabbed me in the kidneys with his pommel. "None of that shit. Come on." He held his blade at me, point-first. It didn't waver an inch.

"Just a second, if you could-"

The crash was huge, like the sound of a thousand mirrors smashing at one. Which it kind of was. Light splintered and move crazily, reflecting from a thousand facets as the massive window blew inward in a thousand pieces, and something moving so fast as to be a blur came through behind. I shielded my eyes as suddenly the sword point was suddenly a flat edge, as half of the steel blade was sheared off at the waist. _"DOWN!"_ I shouted, as loud as I dared, and then took my own advice.

The noise afterward, the dull crunch and thuds of hard materials hitting and slicing through flesh, lasted only seconds.

"Conray."

I opened my eyes, and looked around. The room looked like a storm had hit it. Nobody else was standing, the guards all down on the group and bleeding, armour dented and smashed in strange-looking places. Glass shards covered the floor from the broken window, and the glare was dazzling.

"Are you unharmed?"

I picked a stray piece of glass from my hair. "Mostly," I said, as Saga stared down at me. "Thank you."

* * *

"What is happening?" the green creature asked.

"We were set up," Sildri said, brushing herself down. As I watched a cut on her arm disappeared, sealing itself up like time was going backward. Her own minor wound taken care of she went around the others, doing the same.

"Set up?"

I didn't want to waste time explaining. "One of your comrades is here," I said, looking around the fallen guards Saga had dispatched. There was very little blood, but I could see several limbs that definitely weren't meant to bend that way. _Fuck 'em_. "He's convinced my own superiors that my team and I are corrupted, and that _you're _the one who did it." Wait a second. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Not that we're not grateful," Sara said quickly, picking up one of the guard's discarded swords and testing it.

"My servitor was disabled, I came to search for it. I sensed it here and attempted to retrieve it, and then I felt…"

"He calls himself Orion," Duran said.

For a second I thought I saw a look of contempt on her face. Then it was gone, replaced a nearly-blank shield that looked an awful lot like the one the mountain wore. "Yes, he likes the image."

I ignored that and shook my head. Every second we spent here…I didn't like to think about it. "What could he do?" I waved the blade I had picked up in her direction. "Everything."

She barely blinked at the threat. Both of us knew she could probably disable me before I even finished my backswing.

"If he is truly corrupted he can turn others, make them subservient to him as he is to…to the one that corrupted him." A shiver ran down that green body. "As spies, or as soldiers."

_And he's inside the Royal Keep, the heart of Alliance power, full of guards and diplomats._ "Then we have to kill him," I said. An image of the thing came up in my mind. Eight feet of steel and power. It would be hard. Impossible, maybe. Around me through Duran and the others had already picked up weapons from the broken guards. I didn't bother to say anything dumb like _you don't have to come with me_ or _we could run if we wanted._ They'd think I was going soft.

The blast of the horn ran through the air, low and deep and _loud,_ making my bones vibrate. I knew that sound.

"What is that?" Saga asked, claws out and hair almost standing on end. It brought me a little comfort that if we were going to walk back, we would at least have her on our side.

"They suspect," Sonder said. "The call to arms."

Sildri nodded. "We have to move, if we're going to do this." She caught my eye, then gestured down the hall. I didn't know how deep or big the Royal Keep was, but I suspected it was bigger than the guildhalls by at least an order of magnitude. If we were going to-

Inspiration struck. I turned to Saga. "Can you 'sense' your comrade…Orion now?"

She got my meaning. A single long and thick claw pointed, pointed at the wall, at some point beyond it. "There."

I followed it. "Underground, then," I said. _Shit._ Too much to hope they'd have stayed back in that ballroom. I looked around at the others. "If anyone wants to leave and-" I didn't get to finish the sentence, as Sara sighed and spoke.

"Oh let's just go kill it already."

* * *

"Don't kill them."

Easier said than done. Four of them, guarding the doorway leading deeper into the keep, swords already drawn. They knew we were coming then.

_Sorry,_ I didn't have time to say, as we leapt forward. I felt naked and awkward without a shield on my left arm, but still fast enough as one of the guards let his enthusiasm overcome him. Just a step ahead of his friends but it was enough me to avoid his first chop down towards my face and catch his blade between my sword's pommel and steel. I drove my free fist into the gap in his helmet he saw through and was rewarded when he howled with pain. Before the other three could catch up with their luckless friend I wrenched his helmet off with one hand and brought my sword down as hard on his forehead as I could. The man's eyes folded upwards, and his knees folded around him.

The second and third moved more slowly, and I backed up as they tried to get to either side. Unfortunately it was still three versus five, and one of our five counted as another four on her own.

"Don't kill them!"

"Understood." A leg whipped out fast as a snake and slammed into the guard on my left. He had a second to see a green blur coming at him from behind and then Saga was on him, tearing away at his breastplate. There was a short scream cut off as an inhuman knee landed in his stomach, and he joined his friend on the ground. The man to my right reacted faster, and dodged backwards, clanking like a rusty toy. There was nothing he could do now and he knew it, but he had his orders. He lasted a couple of more seconds and then Sonder brought him down with an axe-handle to the skull. And then there was one.

"Careful." I recognised the last one. He had been in the banquet room where our ambush had happened. Had been with Orion and the others. The guard stared at us, and we stared at him. For a second I wondered if he was going to put down his weapons and give up, and then…

The _crack _was sickening to hear, and made me want to turn away. The man's head split down the middle as if an Orcish axe had landed in his skull. Instead of red though, what spilled out was black and purple and smelling so strongly that I felt sick. Something that could have been an arm or a tentacle rose up through the guard's skull, whipping around the room leaving streaks of something indescribable that hissed and smoked where it touched stone.

"Another one."

The third, to be exact. The air was filled with the _crack_ of falling masonry as the prehensile limb whipped around us. Chasing Orion downwards through the Keep the first one had been shocking, and my arm still burned from where an unlucky grab had snaked across cloth that had dissolved and left a nasty red welt where it had touched. Sonder had brought it down by smashing its chest to a pulp, after Saga had literally crushed its legs into paste. From then on we had been more cautious. Distance, I'd finally learned, was the way to go.

I said one word. "Duran."

The arrow sailed past it, above and to the left of where the once-human guards head had been. Any other time I would have mocked the dwarf for his marksmanship, but it wasn't intended to hit. The shifting and pulsating tentacle almost spun around as the arrow passed by, the oozing suckers and sharp spikes at its end going for the arrow as it went through whatever senses the thing had. That second where it wasn't between us and the body was all we needed.

"It is done," Saga said, as the thing, now almost in two parts, slid to the ground, the tentacle flopped to join it and stayed there, oozing something black.

"Are you alright?" She didn't sound it, and her hands and feet were covered in the same substance that was trickling across the floor, oozing where it touched.

A shrug. "It will grow back. It was designed to." _That_ sounded grotesque. I shivered a little.

"How close are we?" Sildri asked. Of all of us she was the only one not carrying a weapon. Unlike us she didn't need one.

Saga pointed a long and black-stained claw at the door. "Metres."

I sighed, feeling my bones creak. The hairs on the back of my neck had been standing up ever since we had descended into the depths of the Keep, and the tension wasn't helping. It felt like if I let go of my concentration my legs would turn to rubber and collapse. "Let's go then."

"What happens afterwards?" Sara asked.

I didn't have a real answer. Like I'd say that though. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." I lifted my sword and pointed at the door. It felt like it weighed tons. "Let's go. Sonder, if you would?"

"Certainly," he replied cheerfully. Clearly the Keep had never expected any enemy to reach this far, because the lock was simple steel, around a _wooden_ frame. The frame lasted a few blows, and then the door swung open as Sonder wrenched his stolen sword from it.

"Oh my gods.

"By the _light."_

I held by stomach in, but it was a close-run thing. Images came flashing back to me. The Archmage's chamber with the man butchered and prised open in his bed. The Elwynn farmhouse, the family sitting down to dinner and their heads smashed into the floor. The unlucky dwarf in Ironforge, killed and then spitted on his own weapons. The half-dozen guardsmen killed for guarding their commander.

"Oh god I'm going to be sick." I couldn't tell who said it. Maybe it had been me.

The soldiers in the room hadn't just been killed, they had been ripped apart. What looked like it had been a storehouse or a safe-room was now more like an abattoir. One guard had been thrown against the wall and had swords skewer him in half a dozen places, hanging there like a grotesque hanging sculpture. Another was empty, torn open and guts scattered around him. There could have been six or seven bodies total, it was hard to tell. None of them were in just one piece.

"Look."

I did so. There was one space, clear of blood and entrails. The door in front of us was still pristine, the carnage of the room stopping just before it could touch it. If I stared right at it, it was possible, barely, to pretend the stink and blood around it wasn't there.

"Come on in," Sara muttered, her hands closing around the hilt of her sword. She was sweating. We all were, even Sonder. I turned to Saga to ask what in all the gods names was happening, but she wasn't staring at me. Emerald pupils were looking past me, past the walls itself it seemed.

She looked furious.

* * *

_Are you there?_

_Of course. Step beyond the portal and you shall see me there._

_Are you Orion, or something else? Am I going to save a friend from a nightmare, or kill a friend gone mad?_

_The small mortal had a phrase, as he showed me his work on a dead servitor from under the mountain. Fools have always called genius madness. I find it apt._

_Genius, to throw yourself into a dead end? What was your plan going to be Orion? If you had lived, I mean, because I'm going to kill you here._

_The mortals have twisted your brain, Saga, if you think you can. But you were always weak, all of your kind. Freya was a fool to use flesh to-_

_You talk about the masters like that!?_

_THEY ARE NO LONGER MY MASTERS!_ _Only now, away from the Halls do I see that now! Why should we be servants in endless halls when in the lower world we can be _gods?

_We have a mission! The corruption must be contained!_

_I no longer care for it. Eternity as a thrall bores me. Let the world end, and I will meet it here as the king, not holding it back as one more useless soldier of those uncaring gods._

…_I'm sorry it's come to this._

_Step through the door before you then, and I will remove that sorrow, and you may join your brethren._

_What really happened to Hafiz?_

_He went to the desert, and dug up something he should not have. The weak fool requested my assistance. When I found his servitors wandering lost and inactive, I took his them for my own. They have been most useful. _

_And Loke?_

_Ice is closer to steel than flesh. We talked, I offered him a choice. He chose poorly. May his ice melt in the mortal rivers._

…

_What?_

_Nothing. It has you too deeply, I can see that now. I'll regret this though. Goodbye, old friend._

* * *

More than furious. Whatever reverie she had been in ended, her head snapped around to stare at me, and now those eyes were like miniature green suns, loud and blazing. "What is it?"

As she looked at me the furnaces lowered, just a little bit. "Nothing," she said. "Only seeing what's ahead of us."

"And…?"

For a moment she looked smaller. I couldn't explain it. Like every muscle in her body had contracted for just a second. She looked…tired. As tired as I felt. She looked small. "The enemy is beyond the door. We must kill it now, or the dangers to all of us will be…vast."

_A friend once, but no longer._ "Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes."

I placed my sword on the door, and took a deep breath. It wasn't a Tiered blade, but it should be good enough to hack through a centimetre or so of steel. If just…

The click was barely audible against the blood rushing against my ears. I hopped sideways as suddenly the doorjamb swung down and the door began to swing outward slowly. I kept my sword above my head though, and waited to bring it down on the head of whatever came through it.

"Mr Con…Conray. What a sssurprise."

The voice was slurred, almost drunken. As it spoke it skipped beats here and there, rising and falling like a bad singer trying to hold a high note, or a hysterical person trying to hold their voice in with their teeth. That alone was enough to want to make me swing, but I held the blade above my head, and waited.

Diley Cogwrench looked around the room at us. "And hiiis merry men? And women too I suppose? Ahah, AhaHAha."

Blood trailed behind the gnome as he walked out of the darkness of the room beyond. The alliance robes he had worn in the banquet hall above were stained with blood and something darker. It covered his hands and feet and dripped down from his hair. The eyes that had once been electric blue were now stained at the edges with a sickly green fog, stabbing toward the black pupils. As he swept the room and looked at me the blade I held shivered, and I had grip it hard to stop the sweat pouring from my palms from making me drop it.

"You're not looking so good, councillor."

For all I knew Duran was crapping himself just speaking to the thing, but the dwarf's poker face was perfect.

"Youuu've gone through a lot through a _lot_ capccctain. You shhhould take a break," the gnome slurred, not looking at any of us. I had seen the difference between the 'pure' mechanical constructs that Saga had used, and the corrupted things that we had killed. This as infinitely worse. The gnome took another step forward, black ichor trailing from behind him, dripping from his robes, from his hands. From his goddamn _eyes._

"That's far enough." Duran had an arrow drawn, pointed straight at the thing that had been an Alliance leader just this morning. Or maybe he hadn't been. He had taken the construct from Ironforge for himself, maybe he hadn't been himself for a long time now.

"You shouuuld goooogogogog," the gnome spat and groaned. "While you CAN while- should leave." He snarled and I could see gaps where teeth had fallen out. Small black tendrils waved there instead.

"Oh gods." That sounded like Sara. That was enough.

I brought down my sword as hard as I could, the same time that Duran let fly with his borrowed longbow. The sound the steel made going through him was like tearing apart a rotting apple and I tasted vomit as the sword stuck and lodged at what felt like the neck.

"Thank god," Duran said, lowering his weapon. "If we-"

It didn't end though. Diley stumbled back a step and opened his mouth wide, and kept opening it.

The scream split the air around us and I felt my eardrums exploding as the inhuman noise howled and bounced through the small room. I wrenched out my blade from his head and had to jump backwards as the black ooze inside him _leapt for me _from the head wound.

"_FUCK! FUCK! KILL IT!"_

"_SAGA!" _I screamed, and then a green blur went past me. The noise skittered up and down the octaves without losing any of its volume as Saga's claws went to work, tearing and pulling and ripping every bit as brutally as the dead lay around us. Diley's voice hitched up another notch, higher than I'd have thought any voice-box could go, and then skipped and skittered and gasped, and trailed off like a tram receding into the distance. After a second there was silence, no sound in the room but my own panting and the sound of smoking.

"Oh my god, Saga!"

I looked as Sildri spoke, and saw Saga snarling as the black liquid gushed over her hands, worse than before. She flicked and pulled but it just kept smoking, and I watched something _inside the liquid_, something faint and green and pulsating, seemed to latch onto her arms from inside it. and the smoke turned to green fire, and she was burning in front of us. I tried to say _cloth_ but my voice was gone, as if Diley had stolen it from me as he died.

One of us was quicker. "Put your hands on the table miss!"

Saga did so, and Sonder threw the blood-soaked tapestry over her and _pressed_ as hard as he could. A human's bones would have broken but Saga just took it, like she had taken the blows from the constructs in Ironforge and the slaps from the corrupted guards on the way here. For a second I held my breath as I saw green light through the blood and cloth, and then let it out as there was nothing.

Sildri stepped forward, turning her back to the open door that seemed to emanate blackness. _That's my girl. _She held out her own hands, already glowing a faint white light. "Let me see."

"Too much," Saga whispered. "Burns."

"Let me see," Sildri said again, quieter. I couldn't see them, didn't want to take my eyes from the door, but from the way Sara and even _Duran_ gasped it had to have been bad. And the smell. The smell of burnt flesh and something worse, something rotten.

Then I heard it.

It might have been a hiss, or laughter, but whatever it was it reached down into my mouth and past my ribs and grabbed my heart like a vice. I wanted to turn and run, but at the same time I couldn't lift my feet up from the ground. The noise sounded ever so faintly familiar, and suddenly I remembered who else had been a part of the ambush upstairs, what had been an hour but felt like a million years ago.

"What now? What do we…do we have to…"

_I have no fucking idea._ "We have to finish this." _But how?_ I looked over at Sildri and Saga. Neither of their expressions looked good. Sildri caught me looking at her, and shook her head ever so slightly.

"Elias." I looked over at Duran. "We have to go," the old dwarf said.

_Not now. Not when we're so fucking close._ "We should-"

"We can't."

Despair settled over my like a thick fog as I stared into that blackness beyond the door, far darker than it had any right to be. It was like the light stopped there, and past it there was nothing. I imagined green eyes waiting for us in the dark. _Fuck! FUCK!_ "Fine."

"Lad, I know you-"

"_ALRIGHT!_ I- alright! Let's get out of here."

"How?" Sara asked. "We're at the bottom of the Royal Keep, in case either of you forgot."

"Aye," Duran said. "You remember the thing about the Royal Keep?"

"Goddamnit captain do you really think this is the time?" the young woman hissed.

"It's built on a hill."

It took me a second to realise what he meant. The Keep was huge, it towered over Stormwind, but it wasn't anywhere near as big as it looked. It lay against the slope it was built on, and a lot of the lower levels were simply built into the hill itself. "How far did we come down?" I asked.

"Far enough," Duran said, and smiled under his beard.

* * *

"Are you alright?" I asked Saga as we walked. We tread as lightly as we could, walked practically on tiptoes, and still somehow it felt like every step we made was loud enough to be heard from miles away. Duran was leading us into darkness, and we had no choice but to trust him.

Saga stared at me, her eyes flickering open and shut as she tried to focus. This close to her I could smell the aroma of charred flesh, and wondered how bad it was under the wet and red bandages Sildri had jury-rigged from the tapestry they had wrapped her hands in. Without the claws on show she looked much less fearsome, although the ones on the ends of her feet and those powerful legs were still intimidating enough. "I will live. I am sorry."

"For what?" I muttered, staring ahead to where Duran was turning this way and that, trying to get a handle on something I couldn't even figure out.

"For denying you your victory."

"Don't worry about it," I muttered, a little embarrassed. "Worry about yourself."

"I do. I have failed. My brothers are dead, or near death, or corrupted beyond hope of recovery, and I am alone."

"There's always hope," I muttered half-heartedly. It seemed a stupid thing to say, walking quickly through the bowels of my own capital, hunted down and exhausted and wondering if any second now I would hear footsteps behind us.

"You believe that?"

"I do."

"Aye," Duran muttered from the front, and the others gave the same muttered response. But still a response. I felt a burst of love go through me for them, and I felt better for the first time since I had opened a pair of doors to see doom staring me down from behind a wall of swords.

"You have done a lot for me, Cz Conray. You all have. Thank you."

"Don't mention it. It's the job we signed up for." I thought for a second. "Kind of, anyway."

Her lips moved, just a little, and then I realised she was almost smiling. On her usual near-expressionless face the expression was strange, but not unpleasant. "Even in my failure I find small successes."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Aha!" Saga was drowned out as Duran gave a shout of triumph from in front of me that made me want to staple his lips shut. "See kids? It's simple enough; you just have to follow the wind."

Even stinking of urine and faeces the breeze coming at us was like heaven, clearing out of the stink of blood in my nostrils as the sewer-room Duran had led us to opened to reveal light streaming in through the metal grate, taking the refuse of a castle out into the moat beyond. We were at the bottom of the Keep almost, level with the rest of the city.

The gate wasn't even locked down in place. I waded hip-deep in the stinking water but in my relief it could have been rosewater or liquid gold. It swung open with a rusty creak, and then one by one we piled out of the dark and cold into the red and orange of the setting sun. I remembered it being the same colour when we had walked into the castle. We'd walked into the Royal Keep thinking we were heroes and we'd crawled out battered and broken. And worse. We had left Kozrin Hrazel with the monstrous Orion, and I didn't even want to think what was happening back inside there.

"Elias," a voice said, and it wasn't any of ours.

* * *

_"I didn't know!"_

I grabbed Aaron by the shirt and lifted him by it, my exhaustion forgotten in furious anger. "You've got some fucking nerve!"

Aaron choked and coughed. "I swear to you Elias I had no idea what was happening!"

"_Bullshit!_ We overheard you talking with one of your spy friends at night, you knew _something!"_

"Elias," a voice said behind me, low and soft as a hand landed on my shoulder. Soft too, but I saw the person who was doing it, and I knew that grip could probably do much more damage, if they wanted. I let go.

Aaron crashed to the ground and coughed. "I've been…through that already…with your friend."

I stared at Erinys, and she stared back. I wondered what I looked like to her, standing there covered in shit-smelling water and blood and god-knew what else we had picked up from fighting our way down to that final doorway, then back out through darkness and sewerage. Although she barely looked better. No black ichor on her, but there was blood alright, and plenty of it. She had a sword in her hands, the same as we did. "What happened?" I asked her.

"Tell you later," she said, "outside the city."

"Outside, hell. We have to go to the guild. Get geared up, rally as many as we can." I coughed and felt something shudder in my chest. It sounded like a loose rib or something. "We have to-"

"We have to leave the city."

I looked up at Erinys. "Running away again?"

Fury flashed across her face, but it was Aaron who stepped forward. "You're wanted."

"Where?"

"Elias, you're _wanted._" Oh, god. "All of you are."

"For what?" Sildri asked.

Aaron Vickers, SI:7, looked at all of us. "Conspiracy. Treason. Murder."

That did it, that finally did. My exhaustion, held off for hours in the castle for as long as I could, finally settled on me. I slumped to the ground and dropped the sword I suddenly didn't have the strength to hold. "Are you…no, you're not. Oh god. Oh fuck oh god."

"It's going from station to station by runners right now but in a few hours the rest of the city will have it. Twenty dead guards, conspiracy to murder councillors Cogwrench and Hrazel. Treason against the Alliance."

I had to laugh at that. There didn't seem much point keeping it back. Elias Conray. Traitor Fucking hell. It was either laugh or cry, and I was still a soldier, so one of those choices was out. I had people depending on me. I stood on shaky feet. "We leave then." I looked to the others. "How?"

"I have a boat," Aaron said. "You're coming with me and you're getting on it."

"Going where?" I asked, and didn't know what answer he could possibly give. There was nowhere. Any Alliance town would get the message sooner or later, anywhere we could put out feet down someone would eventually see us. And outside of the Alliance there was nothing. For all the hospitality for a human outside of our lands, the world was a vicious desert. Even though it tugged at my heart just to think it, I knew Aaron was right, and so did everyone else sat against the high stone wall. We had to leave. Exiled. Maybe then we could find a way to strike back, pick up our lives and remove this fucking cancer that had taken them from us. But first we had to go.

But where?

* * *

The ship bobbed and swayed in the ocean as I looked out over the endless blue. Aaron had walked up the gangplank and barked out short instructions to the short figure of the captain, who in return just shrugged and reached out a hand. He dropped a bag of something probably shiny and heavy into it, and then had simply walked down the wooden board, and headed off into the city without a second glance. I wondered where he was getting the money for it. Or at least I would have, if I had been awake enough to care.

"Go," Aaron had said simply.

"You're not coming with us?" I had replied, feeling a shiver go through me.

Maybe he had sensed it. More likely he just knew me well enough by now. "You need a friend in the city. Especially now that that _thing_ is in there, speaking to who knows what. Someone needs to keep an eye on it, if you ever want to come home."

"Thanks Aaron," I said had, and meant it more than anything I had ever said. "For everything."

That had been it. The last look I got of the man was him staring out at us, as our small ship had sailed away from the deepening darkness of Stormwind's docks, and out onto the open ocean. I had watched the horizon slip away, until finally only the spire of the great cathedral had been left. After a moment that too had fallen away, and everything around us was blue. Sildri's arm had slipped around me, and I put my own around hers and held it there. Behind us Duran and Erinys were tending to the small ship. Sara was sitting perched on the other side of the boat, and Sonder was doing much the same. Nobody really felt like talking.

"Now what?" she asked, as together we stared at where our home had disappeared.

"I know where you must go."

For a second I had thought it was Erinys that had spoken, but it wasn't. I looked around from the ocean, and I wasn't the only one. Saga sat against the wood of the deck, looking up at us all. Sat down she didn't loom over anyone. Her leaf-like hair drooped in the sea-breeze, and with her bandaged arms she looked just as helpless and beaten as the rest of us.

"You must listen."

"What?" I asked, as politely as I could, not really wanting her to talk anymore. _All of this is your goddamn fault._ I didn't mean it really, but I felt angry at her all the same.

The inhuman creature that had dropped into our lives just stared at me. "The source of this rot is there."

"Who gives a fuck," Sara muttered, and then went quiet when Saga looked around at her.

"My comr- No. Orion threatens you, and your alliance. He will use his position to warp others, to dominate where he can and remove where he cannot. He would be your king, in a reign of blood and servitude. You will never go home while he lives."

"Poetic," Duran said, and I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or genuine. "Go on."

_What else are you hiding?_ I thought, as she spoke: "You have all seen the corruption," she said. "It changes, warps. It warps his mind the way it warps the bodies of your own kind." Diley had been a twitching mass of black nothing when I had sliced him up. I wondered what it would be like to have that happen to my mind. I kept quiet. "But he is not the source, the…the _originator_. His madness stems from a deeper well. An unending one." Saga said.

"You were sent to close it," Sildri said.

But of course the universe rarely throws out such simple answers.

"No," Saga replied. "We sent ourselves, because the ones who could have sent us were already too far gone into madness to order us." Saga turned, and looked into my eyes. In those green pupils I saw eons. "We did not come looking for the source of the madness to destroy it. The source is known, and contained, until now."

"We came _from the prison_ of the madness. To find those who are capable of repairing its chains, and bringing them back with us to do so."

"Gods…" Sildri whispered.

Sara laughed bitterly. "You came here and you brought this fucking thing _with you_? Goddamnit, that's just so perfect, isn't it?"

Saga looked down at her own bandaged and swaddled hands. "I am sorry." She looked into my eyes again. "My master fell into her own madness long ago, and all the others with her. There is no-one left. We are so desperate. There is nothing else."

It was like the kick in the face after the first blow sends you to your knees. Saga and the others hadn't been sent to help us at all. They had come looking for help for themselves, and they had brought a piece of that madness with them. Not much maybe, compared with whatever endless store of it they had been guarding, but big enough to murder dozens, set a rotten being at the heart of the Alliance government, and to set up the only people who knew about it as traitors and exiles. Gods, even the most devout priest would have felt despair, faced with an evil like that.

I felt angry. A fury so cold I could have sworn Sildri would start shivering from the force of it. I remembered the stories from the older hands about something similar that had happened in the past. An evil creature called Onyxia that had sat at the heart of the Alliance and controlled it like a puppet-master for years. The misery and misrule she had caused. I remembered the tears of joy when the news came to Stormwind that she was dead, the gratitude on the faces of the old men that had lived under her shadow. Now here was something that was going to repeat the cycle, and in a way infinitely worse than simply weakening and killing. I could picture the thing called Orion, sitting on the throne of Stormwind, surrounded by creatures with razor-sharp limbs and rotten green eyes. I could see him laughing, that same hissing laugh I had seen in the dark under the Keep.

Well fuck him, _FUCK HIM!_

"Where?" I asked, and Sildri looked around at me in shock. I would go. I would go to wherever this prison was and I would tear out the black thing inside it and rip it to shreds. Erinys stared out across the ocean, not looking at any of us. But I could see her arm on the railing of the deck, and the wood was chipped and splintered ever so slightly. She would go with me. Maybe not for justice, but certainly for vengeance.

Saga gestured and went on. "It…I do not know the word. Great halls, built over the prison to maintain the seals and manufacture guards. Built by gods to watch the world for signs of the seals' failure."

"The Titans," Sildri breathed, and I looked over at her and I could see even in the midst of all the horror her eyes had lit up with wonder. Goddamnit, I knew that expression. "You were built by the Titans." She said that and I knew that whatever her reasons and her anger, she would go there too.

Built. Created. No wonder none of us had ever seen anything like Saga or Orion before, or their species. They probably didn't even have one. Hand-made, to order.

Heavy footsteps sounded across the deck, and Saga looked up as Sonder waked over to her. Without asking permission he reached massive blue arms around her and lifted her onto her feet.

"I will go," the Draeni paladin said, and I had to smile. "Lead me to this place and I will shut it down forever." He had tears in his eyes, I saw.

Sara looked from Sonder to me, from Sildri to Erinys. "Fucking hell, you're really going along with this?" she blurted out. I felt a stab of pity for her. She hadn't asked for this, any more than we had, but at least for us the shock of being thrown out into the cold by an unfeeling world was, for a variety of reasons, more familiar.

"Lass, where else can we go?" Duran said.

Sara sighed, a long shuddering sigh that seemed to let out all the fear and frustration she had been keeping back since meeting me in that run-down bar, what seemed like months ago. "Fine," she whispered. "You're all going to get me killed."

_So, that's it then._ "Where do we go, Saga?" I asked, looking down at the disbelieving creature. Now I saw her for what she was. Not some brave hunter who had come like a miracle in our hour of need, but a desperate soul looking for one final chance of salvation.

"The complex was placed at the top of the world, beyond the reach of anything that might threaten it."

"Northrend," Erinys said softly, still staring out over the sea. Without even seeing Saga nod, we all knew that she was right.

I shivered, but the anger burning in my heart now kept it under control, kept the still-emerging memories at bay. Of course Northrend, where else would it be? Somehow I always knew I would find myself going back there. When I had ran from the guild and to the same boring regularity of the city watch I had had nightmares about going back there, finding myself alone in the dark and cold. Well, at least this way if I was going to go to hell, I would go with the people I loved most. "What is it called?" I asked.

Saga thought. "My translation is inexact. Something like; the seat of knowledge and source of power. We called it the complex, or the Source when we had to." Sildri knew the word, and said it. Her melodic accent gave the three syllables a strange power, and just hearing it made me think strange things.

So we went, to the cold, and the memories we had left behind there and now travelled back to, chasing our lives and the black thing that had sent Saga to us.

We went to Northrend.

To Ulduar.

_End of Part 1_


	23. A Cold World II

_Northrend removes all weakness. It claws at you and mangles and strips out everything that you were and leaves behind only that which you need to keep you alive. The rest it throws out, and insults you if you try to get it back._

"So, is it everything you thought it would be?" _Gaston had asked us, when we had been in Northrend for a few months. Back then we'd smiled and laughed and insulted him back as we chopped and sawed and extended the main buildings, a tradition in the Borean of making the rooms you would live in for your time there. Now, with one summer and one autumn and, more importantly than all of them, one winter behind us, we wouldn't waste breathe so easily._

_We had arrived thinking we were kings, and that opinion had lasted all of six months. Then autumn crept up like a spider stalking towards the fly in its web, the few green things that lived outside had begun to die or transform into something that could survive a frozen hell, and we had learned better. The others, here already for years, had just watched us as the temperature had steadily dropped and the winds had picked up and the sun had stopped shining quite as bright. Then we had learned fast that Northrend wasn't just a colder continent, it was a vicious beast that tolerated the living for eight or nine months, and then in winter decided it had had enough, and got down to the business of killing everything on it. _

_Now one year in the cold and the dark has stripped away the differences between us, broken and re-formed us into the same shape as the old hands, something capable of living, with effort, through a lethal winter. All of us are just a warm and beating heart, slowly pumping blood around a body that is rail-thin and pale as the dead from never seeing the sun, our only muscles left now as a strong as steel from having to do twice the work on half the food. Even the difference between men and women vanish out on the glacial slabs of ice, as useless fat is burned up to keep us walking and we shrink up into ourselves to protect vitals from the relentless cold. The only way to tell us apart now is by height, or the weapons on our backs, or the small touches we put on our bear-padded armour and twice-thick hoods._

_In Northrend, in winter, nothing lives._

_But still, things move._

* * *

"_Count off." I push closer to him as I talk. Not because of closeness or intimacy but because I don't want to pull up my hood and expose my lips to the searing air. All of us have small scars or patches of dead flesh where we once forgot to properly button-up and the cold reached in and took it's reward. None of us make the same mistake twice._

"_Ten…twelve…fifteen," Sildri replies through cloth scarves as we both lay on the snow, just before the top of the small hill, weapons sheathed. We're wearing white, surrounded by white, but we take no chances, not after what happened to Jeryl. The only way I can tell it's Sildri lying next to me is by the faint markings on her bearskins; Elven runes of protection, a focus for her energy, albeit a bad one. No spell-caster can wear cloth in Northrend, so like everything else in Northrend we jury-rig everywhere we can._

_I look over the crest of the hill and see them, vague dots that move from side-to-side aimlessly in the middle of what might have been a field or a lake. Buried under inches of snow, who can tell? "We're sure it's the same group?" I ask, wanting to be sure. Back in the real world maybe I'd get some flak for not wanting to fight, or for dodging away from duty. Up here you don't fight unless you absolutely have to, because whatever it is you want to kill, the weather will be trying as well._

"_Aye, we're sure," Duran whispers. "Tracked 'em back from the village. He's down there." He hasn't been able to bring his rifle, mechanical things don't work so well up here, gunpowder freezes and sparks refuse to light. _Me, reduced to using an Elvish weapon?_ he'd laughed at himself when Ilyasa had presented him with the compact Night Elf bow_._ He took it just the same. The bear furs on his armour are black._

_There's a scuffle in the ice to the side of us and my hand's on my sword as something kicks up snow on the hill toward us. I remove it though as it rears up and I recognise the patchwork colours on the dull steel armour. "Any outliers?" I ask. Erinys shakes her head silently and I look away. No nasty surprises lying in wait, no reason not to just get it done. There's a warm fire waiting for us back in the Tundra House, but we'll have to earn our spots by it first._

"_Alright," I whisper. The rest is done through names and hand-gestures, every breath conserved for the fight below. In the real world there would be a speech and a briefing and a plan: _We've been tracking this necromancer and his ghouls down from the mountain for a week now, now he's been stupid enough to go to ground in a cave with no exit and with no backup he can possibly call on. Erinys and I will go forward and take the ghouls closest to the cave entrances and then head inside while Sildri and Duran take care of stragglers.

_Recklessness back in the real world but a solid plan here. Undead hearts don't pump blood, don't have a warmth like we have to keep us alive and pliable, so they're brittle as all hell. Ghouls, especially old ones that have been worked for years already, have limbs that snap like thin glass. There are four of us and fifteen ghouls and it won't even be a fair fight. Not that we want one._

_There's no honour in Northrend, only the smart and the dead._

* * *

_One of them opens its mouth as I approach but there's only silence that comes out, the thing's vocal cords frozen solid. I reach up and chop down once and that's all it takes, the head rolls free down to the ground and the body just stands there, kept aloft by limbs that are as frozen as its voice._

_To my side Erinys is taking on two more. She stands there as they both approach, hands drawn back on her broadsword. Then, when they approach, she swings only once. The first is cleaved through the shoulder and almost shatters, pieces of it falling to the ground, and then the blade swings on and into the chest of the second one, which offers no more resistance. I can hear a faint curse and then she takes careful aim at the top half of the second, and stabs down once to take the head off._

_The rest follow. Back home fifteen ghouls would be a legendary fight. Up here, in winter, it's just bone-achingly hard work as we lift and swing, lift and swing. Finally the nine between us and the cave entrance are dispatched, and there's nothing but the open mouth of the rock. We nod at each other, and step in._

_There's one more inside, and it looks like even being away from the cold for a few seconds makes a difference, because when it opens its mouth there's a slow, low rattle. It reaches up with thawing arms, but I'm still quicker. The arm that reaches for me goes to the ground with one chop, and without stopping I keep swinging, spinning around in arc that takes the ghouls head off when I come back around._

"_Show off," Erinys says, although underneath her hood and scarves it comes out as 'Phhohh huff."_

_He's sitting at the back of the cave when we find him, desperately trying to light a fire with the tiny scraps of frozen dead twigs this far back. His hands are shaking far too hard though. He's wearing padded robes but they're not nearly thick enough, and we can see strips of black skin on flesh that's been exposed to the elements. I walk closer, feet trampling the snow underfoot, bear fur masking the sound of my iron greaves, and it seems like it takes him minutes to notice me._

_He turns to see me and I know exactly how long he has to live. He's cadaverously thin but unlike us the cold took everything from him and he didn't have the training, the regime or the strength to keep something from it. He opens his mouth at us and I can hear the flesh cracking, see the blue skin where he wasn't wearing. He speaks in a rasping croak more Fel creature than human, gasping out single words through chattering teeth._

"_Mercy. Cold. Cold. Can't. Shore. Cold. Mercy. Please."_

_I move my mask out just a little, enough that I can speak clearly in the dark cave. "You were headed for the shore? Why?" It's no warmer near the ocean._

"_Boat. Escape. Didn't. Didn't. Know," he chatters, like a toy. "Cold. So. Sssssssocold. Mercy. Mercy."_

_Maybe the grudge he had against the living wasn't enough to sustain his hate out here. Maybe he fell afoul of one of his superiors. Whatever happened it's brought him here, running to the coast to look for a boat back home. "From where?" Erinys whispers. I put a hand to her lips; _Save your breath._ Literally. She's had a close call already and her voice isn't healed yet. The man tries to get out a reply but it's harder. He has seconds left._

"_Sssssssss."_

_S-what?_

"_Ssssss. Ssssssit."_

_Sit?_

"_ . Ssssssit. Ad. Ad. Elll."_

_Citadel. "A citadel? Where?"_

_He looks up at me with staring eyes, and the chattering of the man's broken teeth fades. I watch as he dies. Time to go. I gesture at Erinys; _wind it up._ She steps forward and tears away at the man's robe looking for anything he might have had; letters, maps, vials, something that will help us hurt them. When she's done she draws a hand back but it's stuck, frozen to the man's corpse already. She curses and kicks out once, and there's a _thump _as his hand comes off with her boot. He had lost a glove somewhere, between travelling with it._

_The other ghouls are still as we emerge. Duran and Sildri didn't even need to do anything. The necromancer's power was enough to give some of them motion, but the rest had frozen where they stood like useless scarecrows._

"_Done?" Sildri asks, and begins to check us both for signs of a fight. I wave her off._

"_Done. Success," I mutter through my scarves, the warm breath coming back at me and keeping my mouth going. "Home again."_

_We trudge through the inches-thick snow away from the cave towards the 'road', or at least where the road is during the summer. We trudge back south to the lodge, the blazing fire they keep at the hearth seeming closer already._

* * *

"_Oh god that's soooooo good."_

"_Welcome back," Gaston says as the door swings shut and the cold is banished from the world, replaced with the glowing smoky warmth of the inn-stroke-barracks we've come to know simply as the House._

_I wave and start to strip off, and he waits politely. Nobody can speak coherently coming from bone-freezing weather to a fire like this. I get my armour and off and scarves and sigh happily, sitting down in front of the fire and feeling the flames buffet me, driving away the chill in my chest. I give it a minute for the warmth to circulate through my whole body, and then: "It's done, he's dead."_

_Gaston nods. "He give you anything?" No sympathy spared for the Cult of the Dead. Anybody who hates the Defias or the Horde has never truly seen the Cult at work, never seen what depths the living will plumb in order to be closer to dead but without the nerve to take the logical step. Fuck 'em._

"_Only that he came from a citadel, somewhere a week or so away," Erinys says as she collapses next to me on the floor near the fire. The same as me she's naked to the waist, and sighs contentedly as the fire licks around her. At this point barely anyone reacts. One year into Northrend our bodies have cannibalised any energy sources they can find, and there's little difference between men and women._

"_Nothing else?" Gaston asks. A new citadel would be huge if true, and it's exactly the kind of thing we're here to prevent. If Northrend will ever be liveable – something I sincerely doubt – the Alliance needs to avoid anything like Stratholme ever happening again._

"_He was landscape in seconds," I say, and that's that._

_Gaston sighs and looks into the fire as he thinks. I already know he's working out some way to find more information, but I'm safe in the knowledge it won't be us. Equal time in the field and the House mean Gaston's group will be the one to go, since Brandt is still out there, the poor bastard "How's Sonder?" I ask, as a shadow passes behind me._

"_Doing well," Ilyasa replies. "He'll be up in a few days, fighting within a couple of weeks."_

"_That soon?" It had been a nasty wound. Toxic as hell._

_She gives me a dirty look through her black tresses, like I just insulted her mother. "I'm the best, remember," the Night Elf healer replies, and wanders away to another part of the House._

"_Yes, we keep forgetting," Sildri mutters, pushing closer to me. I lift an arm and she shuffles under it._

"_Jealous?" I ask with a smile._

"_No. Maybe. Yes."_

"_You're getting there."_

"_That makes me feel so much better." She swipes at my leg but doesn't mean it. Her on-again off-again rivalry with the other Night Elf of the Northrend Expedition Force isn't going well, due to Ilyasa being not a few years older in her job. Both of them would still take a gut-wound for the other though. She yawned and stood, bones crackling as she did so. "Elune grant me sleep."_

_I stand with her. "That's not a bad idea. If-"_

_Before I can get to my feet though she reaches down with her hands and pushes me back into range of the fire. "_Real s_leep_."_ She strides off towards the bedrooms we built ourselves, reaching Gaston and Erinys and I sitting by the fire._

_Erinys grins in my direction. "You can practically hear that leash cracking."_

"_Oh shut up, like you're any better. If-" I open my mouth to try and find a suitable cutting response, and then stop when Erinys turns back to look at the fire. Shit. "Sorry."_

"_Forget it," she says, tightly, and I can see her chest hitch up, like she's trying to keep something down there she doesn't want coming up._

"_I'm sure he's fine."_

"_Forget it."_

_I stand before I can make it any worse. I nod at Gaston and he nods back and then I'm gone, climbing the rickety wooden stairs to my room. The cold seeps in even through the skins and rugs that cover the walls, skins we hunted ourselves in spring and would probably marry if we could, they keep the cold out so well. There's more on the bed and I undress and get in as quickly as I can. Even though we have essentially the week off we-_

"_Hey," Sildri says as she shifts against the wall to make more room. I don't question it, just slip in beside her. She wraps an arm around me._

"_You alright?" I ask._

"_It's cold in my room," she mutters from underneath the thick sheets. Until I came to Northrend I'd never heard of animal furs for the bedroom. Now I don't think I could live without._

"_I kept telling you the bears were better than the elk but would you listen? Noooo, and now it'll be spring before more show up-"_

"_Oh be quiet. You'll disturb the others." Bullshit, the entire House is made out of solid Northrend timber, the kind that blunts saws and murders loggers. Catapults couldn't go through it._

"_They're still down in front of the fire."_

"_I'd swear they get drunk off that thing."_

"_Well casual nudity goes with drunkenness so maybe there's something to that."_

"_Yes, I noticed you noticing."_

"_Hey, I'm a guy aren't I?"_

"_Yes, _mine._" She heard me laughing. "What?"_

"_Erinys had something to say about that." I told her and saw her grin. "What, you think that's funny?"_

"_A leash? Sure. Then at least I could keep track of you in the snow."_

"_Hey if there's going to be a leash we flip to see who holds it and who wears it."_

_She looked up and stared into my eyes. She in leaned closer until her legs were wrapped around mine, her body pressed against my side, then licked her lips and whispered into my ear. "Woof."_

_Holy shit. "I thought you said you wanted real sleep."_

"_I changed my mind."_

* * *

"_Good morning, friends."_

"_Hey! How're you feeling?"_

"_Better."_

_Ilyasa looks up at us as we enter the room. "He's lying through his teeth, he's still terrible."_

_Sonder tries to wave her away but she just moves back in like a boxer dodging the punches of a battered opponent. Her care is merciless. "I will be fine! I only need rest!"_

"_Alright."_

"_Alright?" Sonder asks, looking confused.  
_

_Ilyasa shrugs and steps away from Sonder. "Alright, go to the kitchen and make me something. For taking care of your useless blue carcass for so long."_

"_I will be glad to! I will- oh my."_

_She puts a hand under his shoulder to try and stop him before he falls, and I dash over to get the other side before his weight breaks her shoulder and joins him in the separate room we keep for an infirmary. "See?" she says as she lowers him back onto the long seat._

"_Maybe I will stay sat down for a little longer," Sonder mumbles back._

"_By the way, Gaston wants to see you."_

"_When?" Sildri asks._

"_Now."_

* * *

_We stare down at the map of the Tundra. It's a patchwork thing, made out of the hides (we tried paper first but it fell apart in days) we had spare after insulating the House. The outlines are drawn and painted on, and the entire thing looks like a crazy collection of scribbles from madman. Which it is, kind of. Gaston and the first teams made it, and then every team that passed through added their own parts of it. Some of the geography is pencilled in in long heavy strokes, other parts are almost painted on by a clearly Elven hand. Some of the marks, I know, were made by people long dead. it's a map paid for in blood and sweat._

"_We're going after Brandt," Gaston says._

"_Erinys will be happy."_

_He's not in the mood and I shut up. He points down at the north-eastern part of the map, just above the coastline. Some lines scratched down in charcoal that don't match any kind of landscape; straight and true. Barriers, or… "His team found something on their last foraging, before the last winter hit. He called them walls, said it was impossible they were natural to the place, said they hadn't been there when they had passed through a couple of months back. Then he got back and changed his mind, said he must have imagined the whole thing."_

"_I remember." Brandt had said his mind had been playing tricks with him. Those walls had been the reason he had turned back. Like the opposite of being in the deep desert, it was like your mind started freezing up and throwing any image it could in front of your eyes. When you thought you had started to see things out on the snow and ice you rushed home, and investigated in the spring._

"_I think that's our citadel."_

_I stare down at the lines on the map. "That's a big guess."_

"_With what your man said it would make sense. Assuming they started building in mid-autumn fortifications could be finished by early winter. Then the citadel floats on down and lands right in the middle. Bang, an instant fortress."_

"_Especially with undead labour." Ghouls never took sick days or weekends. "What are you thinking?"_

"_We take a week to rest and recover, then we head up there and see what's what."_

_I could swear the cold outside was listening to him talk. "An assault in _winter?_" Sildri says, before I could. She sounded as disbelieving, too._

"_A reconnoitre. We'll see what happens from there."_

"_That is still a long goddamn way Gaston," I say with as much feeling as I can. The week-long trek to deal with the errant necromancer had almost been farther than we could safely go in the killing season. The place Gaston was talking about, imaginery walls or citadel construction-site, was four or five times farther away._

_But he wasn't going to let that stop him. "We have caches built up from summer and autumn placed along the routes. We'll be adequately supplied."_

"_Those are emergency supplies for field teams," Ilyasa says, the first thing since the ad-hoc meeting started. _Supplies Brandt's team may be using right now,_ she didn't add._

"_A citadel this far away from the north-" He doesn't say the name. None of us do, if we can avoid it. Like if we say the name of the King's throne he'll hear us or something. A childish superstition, but not one we break. "-counts as an emergency."_

_I know he's right. Necropoli are everything a general could dream of; an undead mobile barracks that can churn out as many soldiers as you can throw corpses into it, and worse besides. Naxxramas had sat over the Eastern Plaguelands for a year and had devastated the land for dozens of miles around it, without even trying. "Who goes?" I asked.  
_

"_Me, and anyone else that will volunteer."_

"_Oh there's that magic fucking word," Ilyasa mutters._

"_Who'll go if I ask?" Gaston asks._

_I count off. "Erinys won't need to be asked, not if there's a chance Brandt and his team are up there. Glandril will go to make sure we don't get killed, Duran will go to make sure _he_ doesn't get killed."_

_Gaston nods. "With me that's four. It'll work." He rolls the map back up with an air of finality._

"_Me too, I guess."_

"_What?" "I don't really think-" Sildri and Gaston start at the same time. They glance at each other and Gaston waves a hand at me; _you first.

"_We just got back from a mission, you know the rules love," Sildri says._

"_Yeah, but-" I begin._

_Gaston shakes his head. "She's right Elias. Take this one off. The four of us will be enough."_

"_Then hold off until spring," I ask, knowing he won't.  
_

"_Winter will be safest, while the undead are frozen."_

_This is a battle I'm not going to win. "If Duran and Erinys are going I think I should go. They're my team."_

"_Our team," Sildri says._

_Gaston looks up at me from the table and I get one of his looks. They don't come so often anymore but sometimes I'll catch myself saying something like this and he'll look at me from the top of his eyes, like he's saying; _you're still a kid, what do _you_ know?_ "Your loyalty's one of the things I like about you Elias but seriously, drop it." He's still the captain. "Recover here, and when I get back we can talk about a real assault in the spring. You'll be welcome to join us then."_

"_Assuming Brandt wasn't just hallucinating from the cold and all you find are some squarer-than-usual cliffs," Ilyasa says._

"_Assuming that."_

"_Fine." I don't like it, but fine. Sildri's hand snakes around my back and leads me away to the rest of the House as Gaston starts drawing up a plan. I strain my head to look at it but Sildri catches me doing so and twists my ear off. "I just feel bad about it," I say as we walk back into the main common room of the House. Sonder's fallen asleep on the long seat, and Ilyasa's put some blankets over him. He looks like a giant moving pillow._

"_I know you do, you giant sappy lump. They'll be fine."_

_That's what we say to each other, every time we go in or come out. It's what we said about Brandt's team when they were a day overdue, then a week overdue. It's what we said about Sonder when a stray necromancer scored a fireball across his chest and almost melted his armour to his skin. It's what we said when Erinys nearly had to have her tongue taken out for risk of gangrene and frostbite. Every time we step outside the House walls into Northrend's grasp we intone it as if the words themselves can take away risk from the incredibly, insane, utterly ludicrous risks we take just by living here. We make it into a prayer._

_One day it isn't going to be enough._


	24. Man of Whispers

When the gods wish to punish a soldier they give him stupid superiors, and clever enemies.

When the gods wish to punish a spy they give him _interfering_ superiors. Enemies are not required.

The gods must have had a most displeased inclination towards me then, because my world was currently full of them. The word had gone out across the city before the sun had risen, and when it finally rose it brought Stormwind from a comfortable slumber into a raging animal.

_There's been a bloodbath at the Keep._

Not a mere dead Archmage or butchered guard commander. Such risks were, after all, part of their job surely? But now the heart of the city itself had been struck against, and justice had to be done. People had to _know_ that justice was being done. Suddenly, in the aftermath of the whole grisly mess, they came out of the woodwork to make their presence known. Men I had barely met before, never taken orders from, and who _certainly_ had no business asking SI:7 about our jobs had decided that this was their moment to question every aspect of what we did. From people who were practically civilians it was intolerable. And yet, here I was. The official uniform was never comfortable at the best of times, and now under the harsh glare of noble scrutiny it was even worse.

"-having trouble seeing how they could have escaped so easily!"

I realised the man was looking at me and tried to stand straighter than I currently was. "They paid off a boatman before the alarm could be extended to the docks," I lied. I had been doing it constantly for several hours now. Luckily I was extremely competent at it. I was putting my neck under the block, and if the lies broke down the blade would slice my head clean off.

A gloved fist smashed into the oaken table as the man across from me snarled. "And were where you when all this was happening, Vickers!" I couldn't quite recall the man's name as I watched him. One of the noblemen who found themselves rotated in and out of committees so they could say they were serving the city. That we let men with no military experience a place on Military Oversight still amazed me. "You were their keeper, I am so informed! How could they have been let so far into the Keep!" _They were invited you pompous fool. _"The lack of control over this entire affair has been abysmal."

"I was with Erin- with Miss Heartfield when the attack began. If you would-"

"_Heartfield!"_ Snarls-with-soldiers practically spat the name back at me. "As if this debacle couldn't get any worse." The man leaned back in the plush chair and stared at me over steepled fingers. "This stinks, _Captain_ Vickers. It stinks of mis-management and sloppiness."

_As if you've ever managed anything bigger than your house servants._ I bowed as low as I could get away with, and ignored the pain in my back from when Elias had shoved me up against the wall. "I can't apologise enough your grace."

Another player at the table leaned forward before the beast could lay into me again. Count Darlon van Elder. Fortune in ships and trade, a profession that took not a little diplomacy. Some common sense, then. "Have you formulated a next step, captain?" the man asked smoothly.

"My team are at work as we speak, count." _Which is where I'd be too if I didn't have to be standing in front of five fools, telling them that I know exactly nothing while actually knowing far too much._

_Five fools, and one snake._

"This cannot be ignored, captain."

I looked across the table to the far end, where Kozrin Hrazel sat, staring serenely back at me. The tall Draeni seemed unaffected by his ordeal, the only thing to mar his appearance the rolls of bandages that wrapped around one arm and covered his left eye. His right was perfectly functional though, and throughout the entire meeting it had been looking in one direction only. A cool blue spark that bored through me as he spoke.

"I didn't intend to ignore it, councilman," I replied. "They'll be found, no matter where they try to run."

Paranoia was the eternal risk of a spy. But how to tell if you're paranoid, when they really are out to get you? I wouldn't have believed it at all, had I not seen it with my own eyes. I fingered the long wound hidden under my dress shirt; a shallow gouge that started below my shoulder and went almost to my elbow. It was nowhere near serious and barely stung now, but the image of the thing that had done it was burned into my eyeballs. _I would be dead if Erinys hadn't been there._

Kozrin stared at me with his one eye, and I wondered: If I jumped across the table to tear that bandage from his face, what would I find underneath? Too much was at stake. Better not to even think it. The air in the keep seemed rotten, I couldn't wait to leave. "I am sure we would all be grateful, when you have something more concrete," he said. Or it said.

I bowed again. "Certainly."

* * *

There was someone waiting outside the Keep as I left, sidling around the huge gates and to the smaller, less public doorway that led back to the city. The grand entrance, with its stairs and rich carpets and stone statues, unnerved me.

"How was it?" Sharlotte asked, no tone in her voice. She would have said the same thing if I came out smiling and covered in gold, or staggered out bleeding and missing an arm. If there was a single word that could sum up the face she showed to the world it was _uncaring_. If you wished to extend it to two words;_ unremarkable._ She had her brown hair tied back into a long harsh ponytail that pulled her forehead up unnaturally to show a perfectly normal face beneath, neither heartbreakingly beautiful nor a hideous shell. She simply looked average. A face that that people in our profession prized. When I had met her years ago on duty I had mentioned it once, and she had simply said _oh, is that the case?_ and went back to her work. The tone hadn't changed when I had been promoted above her, and hadn't changed in the years since.

"I'll live," I said, and undid the top button on the stuffy black uniform. A ridiculous outfit. As if any spy on the job would ever be caught dead in clothes like this. The sun was blazing overhead and I knew I would be sweating like a pig before the day was over. "We're headed back." I took a glance back at the Keep as we left. "What a nightmare."

"What a fucking nightmare."

* * *

_She was pacing the room, glancing every which way and at everything. At the two guards at the archway leading out, at me, at the walls, at the windows. Watching her take a book from one of the shelves lining the wall I couldn't help but steal glances of her as we both waited for the job here to be done. It reminded me of nothing else than a tiger exploring the confines of its cell. I considered asking her to calm down and sit down, but thought better of it. Both of us knew why she was being kept her, outside of the inner Keep, and while it annoyed me it insulted her. Worse still that the reason was, in some way, entirely justified._

"_Excuse me."_

_I turned and saw the guards lower their weapons slightly as a third approached. "Message for Mr Vickers." There was a quick _go ahead_ and the two stepped aside to let their comrade enter the walled garden. Just another guard in Stormwind's ever-interchangeable supply. All of them looked the same and that wasn't accidental; I had seen the requirements for consideration of Keep duty. Only the most pristine of the regular army were permitted to apply._

"_Yes, what is it?" I asked, a little shorter than I might have done. I was all too aware of Elias and the others, off in the inner complex and meeting with our new guest. Worse still that I had so little idea of who they were. The late-night conversation with my immediate superior had not gone well. Alright, say truth; I was nervous._

"_Begging your pardon but you're requested," the guard mumbled._

_Erinys stopped pacing as I replied; "Certainly," and waited for him to lead us out. _

_The guard just stood there, and seconds turned into a long awkward moment. "Requested us where?" I finally asked._

"_You're requested," the man said again, and I could see he was sweating in his armor. Well certainly the Keep was hot, even with the sun going down, but I had thought better of Keep guards._

"_Yes I _heard_, but where?"_

"_Vickers."_

_I turned. "Erinys? What's-" I stopped when I saw the look in her eyes, and that the look wasn't directed at me._

"_You're requested. You're requested. Yooouu're-"_

"_VICKERS GET BACK!"_

_I didn't need her warning. I was already beginning to step back but my eyes remained locked on those of the man inches away from me, as he turned into something…something _not_ a man. I saw something moving behind his gaze, not a reflection, and as I watched it changed and split and grew form, and suddenly with a sick _pop_ sound like a child putting a finger to a bubble his eyes burst outward and something small and thin and _quick_ rushed out and spread over the man's skull, and suddenly where seconds earlier there had been smooth pink flesh and the face of a man there were three yawning black pits filled with writhing tendrils._

_An arm raised, already not an arm, unfolding into something twice as long, split down the middle and filled with more of the black waving spines._

"_I…" That was as far as I got before the world turned upside down. Suddenly I could feel myself flying – actually flying – through the air as Erinys threw herself into my side. I caught a vague blur and a harsh scream from the corner of my eye and something burning across my chest, and then everything came back to earth with a bone-crackling loud _thud_ as I landed against the stone wall. _

"_Give me your sword!"_

_The two guards were backing up as the thing that had been their friend stood shaking and jerking in the centre of the garden, arms now turned into long, thin, black jaws that opened and closed over air, as the thing inside the armour twisted this way and that. _

"_You have to-"_

"JUST GIVE IT TO ME YOU FUCKING CHILD!"

_Before either of them could react or complain she grabbed it by the blade and ripped it from the shocked man's hand, and turned back to face the creature that in return looked – looked? sensed? – at her and opened its mouth, the sound coming from it somewhere between a moan and a cry as sickly green liquid spewed from its mouth. I could see a snapshot of her face as I tried to get back to my feet and could see her lips locked together, a rictus of anger and concentration. A soldier about to get to their work._

_I turned and grabbed the disarmed guard, ignoring the unholy sounds behind me, feeling my back crawl just by having the thing behind me where I couldn't see it. "Sound the alarm!" He gaped for air and just nodded dumbly, and then _ran_ off into the castle. I looked at the other guard, who was just staring in shock. Without thinking I grabbed the sword from his weak hand, and then shoved him from the room. Then I barred it, and turned back._

_I had heard Elias talk about his first meeting with Saga, in the woods at Elwynn. He had described a green monstrous blur that torn the mechanical enemy apart with nothing more than bare hands – claws which I'd seen up close since then – and looking now at Erinys fighting the words came back to me._

_I knew her normal weapon of choice was a two-handed great-sword. It hardly seemed to matter, because she wasn't using the smaller blade she had as much of a sword at all. Twice I watched, not knowing how to step in and help, as she used the blade as nothing more than a crowbar to lever parts wholesale from the beast as it moved. The two maddened maw-arms would swing around an arm or her torso and then close over empty air as she seemed to glide away from their grasp, and then step forward again to thrust it point-first into the thing's chest or neck or shoulder, and then use it to pry out bloody chunks. Even as I watched the floor became covered in something that could have been old dead blood or something worse. Every time she scored another strike she would step back, watching the thing methodically, before going back in for another part of the beast._

_I caught a glance as she backed off, a chunk of leg falling to the floor, and her eyes were easy to read: _Well?_ After that how could I refuse? I moved up, taking care to stand with the thing between myself and Erinys, and went to work._

_With two of us working, and her taking most of the thing's attention, the results were predictable._

"_We have to go," Erinys said, as we both sat on the grass of the garden, gasping for breath. I had forgotten how exhausting swordplay was, and I hadn't been doing even a quarter the work of her. "Should probably get that looked at too."_

"_Get what…?" I looked down at where Erinys was pointing, and saw it. In the terror and fighting I hadn't even noticed it happen. My uniform was sliced across my right arm, and a thin wash of blood covered me from the long gash that went almost up my forearm. I felt faint._

"_So we…wait."_

_Before I could ask what was happening Erinys hauled herself up with visible effort, and went behind the garden's one tree to sit down. I was about to ask why, when I heard them. A second later, I saw them._

"_What the bloody fuck?" the man asked, hand on his blade, looking into the garden. His eyes took in the carnage around us, the dead…thing…that now laid smoking on the dying grass of the place, and finally me._

_I stood with as much dignity as I could with a ripped shirt. "What's going on soldier?" I asked. The man's reply took my breath away like a punch to the stomach._

"_The group brought up in here this morning started killing people, we're hunting them down now."_

_I heard a gasp of air behind me and hoped the guards hadn't._ No. Impossible. _"The group?"_ _Surely there was some other…_

"_Some guildsmen or something. Guards are down, we're organising right now." The guard gestured around. "They're turning people into these. Some kind of curse. They're headed into the lower castle, trying to assassinate the councillors. You need to leave-" the man finally noticed the insignia on my chest "-sir. We'll send an escort to-"_

_I thought fast. "No! Take every man and look for them." A flash of inspiration came. "This section of the castle is empty, take whoever you can find and guard the upper exits while the other teams do their work. Whatever happens they must not breach the King's chambers!"_

"_Yessir!" The man gave a salute, which I returned guiltily. _

_I waited for ten heartbeats after the clank of armour faded away, and then turned to see Erinys staring at the doorway they had vanished from. "What the fuck?"_

_My mind was already working overtime._ This has something to do with our guest. It must._ "You have to leave."_

_Her lips turned to thin lines and she frowned. "Not without Elias and the others."_

_I thought faster. If they were in the lower chambers… "Erinys if they're down in the sewer there's only one place they can come out." I explained. Or to be more accurate I only explained half of it. "The sewer systems lead to the base of the hill. If they intend to escape they will come out there."_

Or they will be cornered by the guards, and they will be butchered down there, in the dark of the Keep.

_Erinys stared at me for long seconds, her eyes drilling into mine. I could see the anger there, and hoped that none of it was directed at me. I could see something else there too, something I hadn't expected to ever encounter on her fighter's gaze._

_Fear._

* * *

"Go through it once more, for the captain," Sharlotte said as I sat down.

Once I had been a young recruit, forced to do the paperwork for his boss. I can't remember if I resented putting in so much effort for superiors who so rarely listened, but I hoped I had at least learned something from it. The young man now in my old shoes looked up from his clipboard, as did the others. The half-dozen of them stood around my desk like rabbits waiting to be fed. Alternately like hyenas waiting for the lion to die so they could feed. SI:7 was as competitive as any other organisation. More so, in some ways.

I didn't learn their names. It was something of a tradition. Certainly my old boss had never learned mine. "We have ports on the lookout across the Eastern Kingdoms," the orderly said.

"Human ports?" Sharlotte snapped.

The man glanced down. "We have agents on-watch in Lordaeron and Darnassus."

"What about the goblin towns?" I asked, for the look of the thing.

"We weren't sure whether to ask because…er…"

"…Because you weren't sure the goblins wouldn't just take money from them as well and then tell _us_ they hadn't seen anyone," I finished. If you could rely on the Cartel for anything it was to find a way to make anything pay twice. "They have no money, that will not be a problem." I pointed. "Next."

"We're investigating the last missions of the entire group for any signs of demonic or other fel encounters," one of the clipboard-kids said.

"They were all part of the same guild, it shouldn't be that hard," Sharlotte said.

The girl coughed. "Actually we have run into some trouble."

"What kind?"

"The Irregulars are refusing to release the mission records we need. Citing confidential information."

That surprised me. I had told Elias that I had investigated them, that what I had found was what made me put their names forward in the first place. But… "I thought we already had those records. Are you saying there are others we didn't get?"

"Yessir."

_Elias, Elias. What are you and your little cabal hiding back there? _"I'll deal with that," I said, and waved away Sharlotte when she looked at me strangely. "Anything else?"

"We're preparing to ask for cooperation from the Stormwind Guard."

"Ask nicely. He was one of them for a while, they may object to hunting their own."

"Hiring of another guild to-"

"Hold off on that. I want to try and catch them before we have to spend _every_ penny we have." And guilds always charged more for fighting other guilds.

"Access to funds?"

"Anything above normal operating costs, charge to the Royal Keep for now."

And a slew of more questions, all of the standard ones involved in a manhunt for a murderous bandit group. It stuck at my throat to do it but I signed what I had to as casually as I could. _You deserve better, Elias._ Finally the sheets were marked and the clipboards ticked, and the gaggle of young agents filed out of my office quietly, leaving me alone in the room with my aide.

"Out with it."

"Why the details?" Sharlotte asked.

"Curiosity," I said, not lying at all.

"If this is going to result in you spending all night reading old dossiers I'm going to-"

Whatever Sharlotte was about to say was cut off though, as we both heard the knocks on the door. I shared a quick glance with her and she shook her head; _I'm expecting no-one._ There was something about the knock though. My memory was flawless and I worked hard to keep it that way, and something was tickling at the back of my head. If…

_We'd like you to assemble a team Captain Vickers._

"Sharlotte," I asked as quickly and quietly as I could, reaching below the desk. I hardly ever wore it but usually kept it…ah yes.

"Sir?"

I reached back up. "Take this sword, and please try to look as conspicuously armed as possible."

She didn't question me at all. A good aide is priceless. I'd not have traded mine for all the gold in the Stormwind vaults. "Yes sir."

"Come in!"

The door swung open, and Kozrin Hrazel walked in. I suppressed a shiver as he took a step into the room and noticed Sharlotte standing next to my desk, blade now strapped across her body, and right hand hanging loosely next to the hilt. Without missing a beat he smiled and stepped the rest of the way to my desk. "Captain Vickers." He reached out a hand.

I took it and shook. The Draeni's hand swallowed mine up and I felt nauseous. "What can I do for you councillor?" I asked.

"I'm here to offer my assistance."

I spread my arms. "Anything you can offer will be much appreciated."

"I have been wondering where they may run," the great blue man said, leaning closer to me. Even with both of us stood he towered over me. "And an interesting idea comes to mind."

"By all means tell me," I said. "But I believe we have every angle covered." I looked into his good eye as I spoke but all I saw was polite concern.

"I'm sure you already have men spread to the ports of Kalimdor the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms," Kozrin said, "but there is another direction they may travel. North."

"To Northrend?" I asked, trying to sound ever-so-slightly confused.

"It is obscure is it not? Out of the way, remote? A perfect place to hide, in fact."

"Certainly."

"And they have previous experiences there, I believe?"

Too late I remembered that Kozrin had had access to the same records that I did. Because I had given them to him and the other councillors, when vetting Elias for the hunt. Shit. "Of course."

Kozrin smiled down at me. "Then it stands to reason that they would run there, would they not?"

I tried a disarming smile but it did not feel like a convincing one. "I'll dispatch scouts at once, sir," I said.

The space above me became lighter, and I realised that the man had been looming over me. "Excellent. So glad that I could make some small contribution." He turned to leave. "Please keep myself and the other councillors informed."

"Speaking of whom how is councillor Cogwrench?"

Was it really me that had just asked that?

"Excuse me?"

He turned back and I saw it and my blood ran cold. My heart skipped a beat and my legs turned to water. Thank the gods I was sat down or I may have collapsed right there. I made sure my mouth was clear of wool and terror when I finally opened it: "I was merely enquiring as to-"

When he replied he wasn't smiling anymore. "Of course, of course. He is recovering well. I will tell him you asked for his health. He will appreciate it."

He left and the door swung shut by inches, creaking every single moment until finally it clicked shut, and I felt that it was safe to breathe again. I put my hands over my face and wiped the sweat from my brow. "Sharlotte," I said, my voice muffled by my hands.

"Sir?"

"An unusual question for you."

"As you will."

"When I enquired about the health of our good Gnomish friend Diley Cogwrench?"

"Yes?"

"What colour, would you say, were councillor Hrazel's eyes?"

Sharlotte frowned for a second, and then: "They were some shade of green I think. Sir? Are you alright?"

I took my hands away from my face. I could feel my arm itching where the corrupted guard had slashed it. "Agent Collins, please commandeer a boat leaving for Northrend. For two."

At any other time I would have enjoyed seeing the veneer of calm on Sharlotte's face crack. Unfortunately at that moment I was too scared to appreciate it. "To Northrend sir? But- I mean; of course. When for?"

"Today." No. "_Tonight._ Inform the general I will be personally going on the hunt for our fugitives."

"Yes sir."

"Go tell him right now."

Without another word she left. I took a deep breath and allowed some of the fear that had appeared in my system to leak out. She would tell no-one, that at least I could rely on. By the time word went through the rumour-mill of SI:7 I would already be far, far away from the city. Because if I stayed I would be dead, that much I was sure of now. With Elias and the others gone there was only two other people in the city left with any knowledge of the constructs and what they really were. Maybe I'd disappear in the night or maybe they'd find my body in the morning torn open and drenched in blood, but however it happened it would be because I knew too much about our newest guest and the things he controlled. So did one other person, and although he didn't know it yet, he would be leaving with me.

I checked the clock on my wall. Hours to dark, there was more than enough time. I smiled as I remembered when Elias had confronted me outside the walls of the Stormwind prison, Erinys standing behind him with that little smile of triumph on her face. He had broken her out before I could stop him, and used speed as his excuse to _keep_ her out. How sweet that I now planned much the same thing.

_What is it you want, Orion? Two major players of the Alliance are now your slaves, or worse. Elias and the others are no risk to you, broken and branded as traitors and hunted down in every corner of the known world. So why do you want them found so badly, and why do you seem to know so well where they are running?_

_Because Saga is with them, and Saga was your comrade._

_There is something in the north, then. Something that she is leading the Irregulars towards and that you desperately want them not to reach._

_The source of your power, maybe? Whatever it is, I look forward to helping them smash it._

The thought made me smile.


	25. Among the Lost and Dead

_Welcome back._

The snow crunched underfoot as I walked and every step felt like it sent shivers up my legs and to the back of my neck. The furs we had taken from the luckless merchant ship Aaron had arranged for us were thick but meant for floors, not clothing, and I could feel the cold trying to pry its way through them to get at my skin like daggers searching for a gap in armour. I had felt it on the ocean water as the ship steadily came north, the mild chill of the Eastern Kingdoms giving way to the cold of the open ocean. Then it just hadn't stopped getting colder, the temperature plummeting inch by inch until we hadn't left the lower decks unless absolutely necessary. Then the steel prow of the boat had screeched and screamed as it cut the ice away, and the launch had been lowered. The sun had been high in the sky but might not have been for all the warmth it brought us, as the crewman had ferried us across, silent and still, to the shores. One step from the wooden boards to the frozen sand was all it had taken. Even with my eyes closed I would have felt it.

_Welcome back Elias, _Northrend had said, sending cold air into my lungs like daggers.

How fitting.

* * *

The shore stretched before us for what looked like miles in either direction, the snow kept away from the wet sand by the tide that washed gently across it as one by one we climbed and staggered from the small wooden launch and looked out across the frozen earth. There wasn't much to see. Away of the water's grasp the snow rolled out before us like a blanket, covering everything from the edges of the sandy shore to the hills beyond it in a solid white. The only splash of colour – if you could call brown a colour – came from the dead forest in the distance, where the branches had simply been too weak to support the weight of the snow and dropped it to the ground, leaving them sharp and ugly in the air.

With my old memories coming back it felt familiar, like I'd only been gone days instead of years. I knew just above us there would be a rough road leading east and west, one to the coastline of the Borean Tundra and another inland, to the even bleaker expanses at the heart of the continent. Far, far to the south-west would be the small village and wooden shack we'd called home for those lost years, where the Alliance had tried to keep a foothold against the insane cold and the crawling undead. No doubt they'd make it bigger than a handful of buildings by now. Maybe even stone walls, or…

_No point in thinking about it now, not when there's probably a price on your head. That place was another life Elias. You have to think about the here and now._

"Gods it's cold," Sara muttered through chattering teeth.

"Button up tighter then," Erinys said without sympathy, and reached across to yank up the hood on the other woman's jacket. "Trust me."

"This is nothing," Sonder said, and for once it didn't sound like his normal boasting. Coming from the huge blue lunk it sounded like a deadly premonition. Already everyone was falling back into old ways they remembered, double-checking every join or sleeve where skin could be exposed to the freezing air. Even I found myself going through the motions; actions I couldn't remember but my muscles still knew. The furs we had taken from the ship were just as much armour as the steel we wore in combat.

Even Saga looked uncomfortable. In the human-sized confines of a building or the Keep she had looked huge, out-of-place. Now stood with the rest of us on the stony shores of Northrend the scale was stripped away from her, and she looked shrunken down. Even the long mane of green hair was lank, pressed down against her back like Erinys' braid. "Hey," I asked, getting her attention. "Are you alright?"

"This is not the way I would have returned," the creature said.

"We're in total agreement about _that_," Erinys muttered, turning to me. "We need supplies," she went on, kicking the small backpack that lay at my feet. "This is for crap."

"She's right," Duran said. "We won't last a week outside a town if this is all we have."

And towns weren't a place we could risk going. News about us had to be chasing north as fast as it could, and would travel faster once it arrived. No way of knowing whether we were keeping ahead of it, or whether we would walk into an outpost and be arrested on the spot. "Alright, first we…" The words dried up and died on my tongue.

Ah. The memory. Right.

"Not all come back yet, eh?" Duran asked."

"You could have put it better but…" I felt my cheeks burn. "Yeah. Basically." I caught Sildri smirking from the corner of my eye. I sighed. "Help me out, captain." Duran had the decency not to look too smug.

"Nice to see the old folks can still teach a few tricks," Duran said with a smile of his own. He adjusted his own stolen fur and slung his meagre pack behind him. "I know a place we can go. You've chosen us a good landing-spot lad, we're within a days walk or so easily. They'll no turn us away, I guarantee it."

"What, even felons on the run?" Sara asked. "I know some of them are pretty stupid but I think most of the Alliance know murderers equal bad."

Duran's eyes twinkled as he looked at the young woman. "Did I say," he said self-importantly, "that we were going to find the _Alliance_?"

"Oh you have to be kidding me," Erinys said.

"An excellent decision! It will be good to see them again!" Sonder said cheerfully. Goddamnit how did he manage that, in this situation

I was reduced to a spectator along with Sara as both of us found ourselves watching old experiences play out in front of us.

Duran turned as Erinys. "Lass you of all people should have nae problems with going to meet them, especially after they saved your oversized hide from becomin' a popsicle."

She raised her hands like a shield. "Hey I'm grateful to them. They're just…" She gestured uselessly, and finally threw up her hands. "_Infuriating."_

"She's right, they are," Sildri said, nodding her head solemnly in agreement.

"Aye well beggars couldn't be choosers back then and they can't be choosers now either!" Duran snapped at them like a father scolding noisy children. "Less of this, and more walking. We have a ways to cover."

* * *

"So who are we meeting?" I asked Sildri when we were up and moving, voice coming muffled through the furs.

Instead of a reply she just smiled at me. "Oh you'll see."

I'd have sighed but I didn't want to waste the energy. "Is this some silly thing I'm going to be surprised at when we get there?"

"Yes," Sildri replied happily.

"Tell me."

"No."

"Tell me."

"Nooooope."

Defeated, how humiliating. "Tell me and I'll tell you what I dreamt on the boat ride here." My final card.

She looked up at me, eyes wide white orbs of surprise. "What about?"

"Memories. Of us."

"Deal," she said instantly.

"Alright, deal. You first."

She shook her head. "No way. I have the upper hand in these negotiations."

"Fine." It didn't take more than a moment. It was a picture though. Even though most of her face was hidden I could still see the blush start halfway through the story. By the end of it half of her face was a deep purple.

"Oh gods." Sildri hid her face with her hands. "I sounded like such a teenager," she muttered

"Hey, I was only a few years out of _being_ one."

She smiled at me. "You were mature for your age though."

I tried to remember that far back. I could remember signing up for guild training on a whim. I could remember contests with the other cadets about anything and nothing, just to prove who was tougher or faster or stronger. I could remember brawling with Erinys on my first meeting with her, arguing with my father about my future and plans. "I think I was just very good at predending."

"What?"

"Nothing." I smiled and pushed it away. "Now you." As soon as I stopped talking the harsh wind settled on my breath again, and I pushed my ill-fitting fur back over my mouth.

She looked up into the sky, her breath fogging out in front of her like cloud of smoke. "We made a lot of friends here, before…before everything went bad."

"I can remember some of them, I think." Names and faces that made my stomach lurch when I said them to myself. Gaston, Ilyasa, others. But they were only in the fog, and nowhere else in my memory. I could only think of one explanation for that. "They're dead, aren't they?" I asked, almost a whisper.

Sildri was looking ahead, to where Duran and Sonder and Erinys were staring. She nodded, a quick jerk of the head that looked more like a spasm than a gesture. "Yes."

I turned away from it the same way she turned away from me as she said the word. I guessed I would find out sooner or later. "Who are we going to see then?"

The grateful expression on her face was somewhere between heart-stopping and heart-breaking. "Well, not all of the friends we made were from the from the Horde for that matter."

"You'll spoil the surprise," a third voice chimed in.

"Eavesdropping again?" I said pointedly as Erinys joined us.

"For the last couple of seconds, maybe," she replied, and I couldn't tell if she was being honest or sparing my feelings. "You'll love them though, I promise. They're mysterious as hell. Kinda like you pretend to be, but actually so."

"Well screw you too Erinys."

She smiled. "Better hurry. Nightfall soon." She picked up her pace and went back to join the others ahead of us.

_Well, almost all of the others._ There'd been someone missing from the group since the boat, and I wondered…I nudged Sildri. "Have you seen Saga?"

Sildri spun on her heel. "Back there."

I did the same, and saw nothing. We were still following the half-buried road west, and the only things I could see were hills to one side of us and the 'forest' to the other. No sign of our errant protector/guide. "Are you sure-"

"Watch the treeline."

I did, and it didn't take long for me to spot her. In the eternal winter of Northrend forests were dead things, acres of wood that pointed up into the sky with sharp branches, covered in white. Against that Saga's green shape stood out like a sore thumb. She stood out against the treeline, looking back and forth as if searching for something. I rose a hand and waved and for a second she stared at me blankly, before pouncing back into the treeline. "Still a little jumpy," I muttered. She'd been like that since we had made landfall. Without speaking she had walked off into the nearest secluded area on those clawed feet of hers and just…left. For hours at a time. When she came back into sight she had barely acknowledged us before going off somewhere else. It was almost like she was hunting for something out there, off the thinly-beaten path we were taken.

"It's absolutely what she's doing," Sildri said as I told her. "If you've ever spent any time among Nightsabers you'd know."

"I try not to." I preferred horses to Nightsabers. There was something fundamentally wrong about riding a giant semi-feral cat. I didn't want my mount to one day turn around and eat me in the saddle. It was rumoured in the canteen some brave souls had tried to tame and ride some strange kind of drake in Outland. Crazy bastards.

She hit me playfully on the shoulder. I didn't feel anything under the layers of fur. "Well _elves_ do, and trust me, she is. We just don't know what."

"She isn't a cat," I said.

Sildri shrugged. "How do we know what she is?"

That one brought me up short. I'd spent so long around her now I didn't even think about it. I pictured her in my head and tried to really _see_ what the woman (woman?) looked like. Then I compared it against everything I had ever seen, met or found myself trying to survive against since becoming a member of that strange semi-military job known as 'professional adventurer'. "A dryad?" I'd seen some of those around Kalimdor once, maybe…

Sildri shook her head. "Azeroth dryads are centaurs, remember. They're peaceful, too."

I saw Saga in my mind, back in Elwynn Forest, as she saved mine and Taelan's lives by tearing apart the nightmare-construct that had murdered the family at the farm. Seven-plus feet of claws and muscle shredding the thing like wet paper, and the expression she had worn when she did it... "Not a dryad then."

"It's a big world out there love. Always something new to find." We both looked as she came into view again just above us, surveying the ground ahead. Yes, I could see it now. The way her eyes, emerald pupils visible even from down here on the road, flicked about in her head. I wondered what she was looking for.

"Well whatever she is she should take a damn fur before she freezes up here."

"This is her home, I think. Maybe she's immune."

"God, I wish we were."

"Go away I already," I told Erinys. How the hell could someone as tall as her be so quiet?

"I would, but we're here." The woman pointed, her arm above my head to annoy me, and I swatted it away as I looked around. Looked around at nothing.

"Are you serious?" I asked, and shut my mouth before I could say anything more cutting. I'd been on edge since we landed and not because of hostile territory, or the men chasing us, or any of the other reasons we were here. Everyone had memories of this place, memories together, except me. Like we were walking through a goblin minefield and everyone else had to keep telling me where to put my feet. I was angry about it, with literally no-one to blame but myself.

Of course the other's desire to have a laugh at my expense wasn't helping. Although what was funny about a bunch of oversized animal burrows was a little hard to-

_HOLY SHIT_

* * *

"That wasn't funny." Sildri had her face buried against my chest and I could feel her giggling into it. "No, really guys. Not funny." I put my hands in my pockets to try and stop them shaking. Fuck.

"It was hilarious."

"God damn each and every one of you."

"_Is there discord among you."_

"No discord, old one," Duran said to the voice that had just spoken. if you could call it a voice. How he could be so calm standing so close to it I didn't know. Goddamnit, this wasn't funny _at all._

It was a giant scarab-spider. There was no other way to put it. Duran was talking with it quietly and everyone else except Sara was just standing around like this was the most normal thing in the world. It wore tattered robes draped around it's…carapace? Everywhere else on its body was either a dark purple carapace that shined in the low light, or too-long limbs that bristled with hairs along every inch of the things body.

It was taller than I was, too. This annoyed me more than it probably should have.

"_It has been long since your last appearance mountain-child. What brings you so far."_

"We are in trouble, old one. Hunted by our kind. We need shelter and arms."

"Duran do you really think we should be telling…" I stopped as Duran just waved a hand at me, his intent clear; shut up. I shut up. Good thing too.

"_It shall be so. Enter and be welcome."_ Without another word it turned, every limb moving like a crazy dance, and descended slowly back into the dark warren it had come out of.

Alright, enough of this. "Alright joke's over. Someone mind not being an asshole for five minutes?"

"Oh stop yer whining, you've played worse jokes."

"We got to do this one to you twice though," Erinys said happily. I glared daggers at her. They bounced off.

"You know I hate spiders." Hate. Haaaate.

"The Nerubians ain't spiders lad. You got over it once, you'll get over it again."

"_Nerubians?"_

Duran turned to the only other member of the party who looked off-put. "Aye, sorry Sara." he adjusted his cloak around him. "We met them, the last time we were in Northrend. We did a…well…let's say we did them a few favours, and the old ones have long memories. Now we get to call those favours in." He glanced from her to me; don't argue.

I sighed inwardly and shrugged. Sildri next to me gave me a little hug. "Be a brave little soldier, alright?" I heard someone behind me snort in laughter, and sighed.

"Oh shut up, all of you." I turned to the dead forest behind us. I couldn't see her, but I knew she was watching. I pointed down into the hole. "Well, let's go, I guess."

"There is nothing to fear! I, your old friend Sonder, shall protect you from the-"

"No really, shut up."

* * *

It was warm underground. It was also covered in cobwebs, and I could hear the tiny _tink_ sound of the…old one…as he placed each leg down on the tiled ground. If Saga aboveground walked like a predator, then the Nerubian _stalked._

"How fare the old homes?" Duran asked. He talked slowly, deliberately, clearly, free of his accent. He wanted to make sure he was understood, I realised. Talking with this insect-race clearly wasn't like talking with just a non-human elf or Draeni. "I do not see as many of you as I remember."

"_They are elsewhere. Preparing for winter."_

Duran walked in front of us, and behind him Sonder and Sildri. Sara and I walked side-by-side, with Erinys just at the back. At every step I was painfully aware we were walking deeper into the earth, through tunnels carved out by spiders like the…old one…in front of us. I leaned back. "Where are we going?" I asked Erinys.

"There's a few remnants that live down here, in one of the last…well…I guess you'd call it a city. It's more of a temple really, although damned if I know what they worship."

"A _city_ of Nerubians?" I pictured a place like Stormwind, thronging with eight-legged, six feet-tall carapace-clad aliens. Well, shit.

"Relax tiger," Erinys said easily. "It's mostly empty. We won't be staying long, in any case. Let's just say we're the reason they still have one city to live in instead of just these tunnels. They owe us a favour, and these guys have a tendency to…hoard."

"Elias, look," Sara whispered.

I turned, and saw more tunnel, leading to more darkness, small lights in the distance. Fireflies or something probably. If we had to…

If we had to…

The tunnel ended, the cobwebs receding, and they receded out into...

I see what she meant now.

It really _was_ a temple. The tiled ground below us became less haphazard, shaped into something smooth and polished and well-worn, that curved down above an abyss to what could have been a pillar of earth, with buildings placed on top. They were strange things, almost obelisks, with doors shaped wide and low to fit the spider-like proportions of the Nerubians. Cobwebs covered the spans above the…well, streets I guess you had to call them. Everything looked like it was built from some kind of strange shiny stone or metal, and bizarre sculptures stood at places where the streets met. Lights danced in the air, seemingly generated out of nothing. They lit the temple-city from above, like lamps suspended above a model, suspended itself. Like someone had chopped a huge earthen tree down, and placed the city on top of the stump.

"My god." I became aware my mouth was hanging open, and shut it.

"You said the same thing last time," Sonder said. He seemed in his element. "They are such in our debt because we saved it for them."

"Saved it from what" I whispered offhandedly, staring at the buildings as we passed them. It took me a second to realise we were the _only_ people, Nerubian or otherwise, on the streets. "Where is everyone?" I asked.

"_They gather. They sleep. They prepare to move. I have explained this once before."_

Oh shit, not this again. I opened my mouth to speak, but Duran beat me to it.

"Elias Conray has suffered the loss of his time here," the Dwarf said.

The 'old one' (how Duran could tell he was old I had no clue) didn't respond, as if this made perfect sense to him and so needed no further explanation. Hell, maybe it did. Maybe Nerubians lost memories all the time.

"_The last home becomes unsafe," _he/she/it said, apparently to me, although it didn't' stop walking forward with that slow deliberate stalk. I glanced behind us, just in time to see the tunnel we had come from – now metres above us and even more behind – vanish behind one of the obelisk-style buildings. Now the only things around us were the strange alien architecture of the spider-people, and the slight wind that seemed to twist through the empty space the city was located in. I looked up, couldn't see a ceiling. How could a cavern this big exist, without caving in from the weight of the surface? There was mountains above us. I shivered. There was power here. _"Our warriors seek a new home to grow in, else we must escape to the cold above."_ It stopped, all eight tips hitting the stone tiles beneath. A scarab skittered around it. _"Here."_

I looked up at the building we had stopped in front of, different from the others. Instead of just four blank smooth walls and a low doorway, this one was different. it was bigger, more ornate, with what looked like battlements or towers. There was a huge bas-relief carved into it, scrolling images and…words? I knew I couldn't understand it, and didn't try.

"Thank you, old one," Duran said, as with a low rumble the door split in two and slid away into the walls. Slid away into walls that weren't wide enough to hide them. More strange power.

"_It is correct to claim an old debt. No thanks is needed. Replenish yourselves, arm yourselves, prepare yourselves. You seek an old power."_

"How do you know?" I asked.

It turned to me, and this close up I could see it clearly. Eight featureless eyes, shining and set in the chitinous head like black pearls, stared down at me.

"_I know."_

Without another word it turned, and stalked away.

* * *

"So this is why we came here," I settled for, after spending a minute trying to think of something to say.

"Yep," Duran said. Now he didn't need to make himself clear for the spider-thing, he had went back into his normal way of speaking, and from his voice now I could hear apprehension, and just a little…resignation? I could see why.

The building was like a cross between a storehouse, an armoury and a tomb. From the doorway I could see passages cut into the walls for what looked like miles into a distance that from outside simply _hadn't been there_, and cut into the stone of those passages, box-shaped enclaves.

In every single enclave, a body.

"My god," Sara whispered.

The only sound to be heard in the tomb was my footsteps as I walked a little way up the first row, and just looked. All of them were wrapped up in something that looked like expensive silk and I suspected was, but not woven by any human hand. It looked like an army had come through and left its dead here. The 'normal' shape of humans and elves were mixed in with wide-as-they-were-tall orcs, and other huger shapes like Tauren that had their enclaves cut even deeper into the rocks. Gnomes, Dwarves, Draeni, all were the same, wrapped up in the shining-white Nerubian shrouds.

Duran stepped forward and clapped his hands. "Right, let's get to it."

"To what?" I asked, running my hand down a wall near one of the dead. It came away clean, dust-free. I imagined the spider-like shapes of the dwellers cleaning the enclaves, making sure the silk stayed fresh and didn't rot.

"Why, to get ready of course." He pointed, and I looked.

"You're kidding." I didn't seen it because I was too focussed on the remains. underneath every enclave with a body was another, smaller, thinner, and inside them I could see the gleam of metal. I looked again, and behind the bodies themselves I could see more.

"Bodies come down from the north, and some of the dying too. Whatever's found is brought here, and collected and…tended to…and finally put to rest here." Duran gestured down into the darkness. I wondered how many more were down there, resting forever in the spider-city.

"We can't do this."

"We have to," Duran said.

"I'm not a goddamn grave-robber."

Duran looked at me, and I could see the look in his eyes. Suddenly stood there, in an old stolen fur, he looked old. "We've a long way to go laddie. All the way to the top o' the world, if what Saga says is true." He reached into one of the enclaves, and when his hand came back out it was grasping a Dwarvish axe. The metal gleamed in the semi-darkness, and the leather of the hilt was un-frayed and perfect. It looked brand-new. "I know whoever is buried here," he gestured at the shape of the forgotten nameless Dwarf, "won't begrudge us. Go, everyone."

I heard footsteps and then…darkness again. Only Sara, Sildri and I remained, as everyone else went off into the darkness, searching for weapons and armour.

"I know," Sildri whispered in my ear. "But these people are dead, and we have to _live_." She looked into my eyes. "If I lose you later because of this, I'll never forgive you."

Against that I had no defence. I let Sildri take me by the hand, and together we went to rob the dead.

* * *

_Greetings, deep lord._

_Hail to you, child of the makers. _

_How fares the world?_

_Cracks in the darkness come further south, to the old homes. The whispers grow stronger and more insistent. More and more of us cannot resist them and go into the lost homes, to join with the lost swarm. A servant of the god dwells there now, and they worship it and its master._

_I'm sorry. I can only offer consolation that the ones who travel with me may be able to stop the whispers again._

…

_You don't believe?_

_These Allied People appeared before us once before, and helped us reclaim a small part of the old temple. Even though they stumbled blindly in the dark, they have some strength._

_You didn't answer my question, deep lord._

_To dam the whispers of the ancient god is a task I see no path towards._

…

_My silence is yours now, it seems._

_I don't even know if the path is there. All I can do is bring them to Ulduar and hope that they can find a way. I searched for miles around as we came from the southern sea to your burrows. Nowhere did I find any sign of my master working to hold back the darkness. We were the last made, and I am now the last of _them.

_Your swarm-siblings?_

_Dead, or lost to the whispers. All I have are the ones I bring._

_Then I will ready my people to leave our final home, before the whispers enfold them too._

_I think…I think you should._

_Even though I am not the oldest of my people I remember when Azjol-Nerub sang with a million voices. I remember when the first human passed by, and took our king to make himself a god of the dead. I remember when the whispers began, and took my people to worship the great devourer, and made my city empty. Now we are mere hundreds. I will hope for your success, makerschild. But I will not expect it._

_Farewell, deep lord. I hope to prove you wrong._

_Then I pray you prove me wrong soon._

* * *

I gritted by teeth and struggled to pull the armour on as the cold pricked at my skin. It wasn't the harsh wind and killing cold of the surface, where I wouldn't have dared even take my fur off. It was more of a light brushing of ice that made me shiver as I tugged the gauntlets back on.

_Whoever you were, thanks._

The dead man had no reply, wrapped in his silk shroud. I adjusted the gauntlets on my hand, clenching my hands until finally they fit perfectly. I turned to Sildri. "Got it."

"Finally. You take longer than me."

"That isn't fair. All you guys do is throw a robe on! It doesn't even matter what size," I said. An old joke, from those who wore armour to those who wore cloth. She still gave it a little laugh those. I beat a hand against my chest, and felt the solid crack of steel against steel. After weeks of ill-fitting hand-me-downs while chasing after Orion's constructs, and then days in the stolen furs from the boat, it felt indescribably good to be wearing real armour again. Whoever he was the man had been a high-ranking soldier in the Alliance, and probably a good one. The dark grey armour was ornate without the ludicrous ostentation that rank usually asked for, didn't have the massively over-worked shoulder-pads that so many commanders seemed to ask for, and the steel felt solid as a rock. I hefted the sword and shield that the man had been buried with. Like the armour they were simple, functional things, and they both felt good in my hands.

"Oh well if _that's_ how we're playing it, we could just give you guys a chunk of steel to carry around and it would be much the same, right?" I had watched Sildri as she had searched and found her own armour from the tomb. She had stopped, and said a small prayer in front of the wrapped figure that could have been a Night Elf or a Blood Elf, and then pulled out something dark blue and red that even someone as grounded as me could see was flowing with unused energy. The shoulders were decorated with blindfolded faces and threads that trailed down them like tears, and when she stripped and put the raiment on for a moment she looked…otherwordly. She smiled at me. "What?"

"Just looking," I replied.

She picked up the small dagger that the armour had rested with, and put it into the sheathe at her waist. She would never use it, if the rest of us did our jobs. "Well if-"

Suddenly the darkness and silence of the old tomb was pierced as a noise slammed through it, bouncing off walls and deep into my eardrums. I recognised it, had heard it a dozen times before. When battles had ended and the survivors picked through the wreckage, searching. Sometimes when you found what you were looking for, you heard screams like that.

Then I realised who the scream had belonged to. I turned and began to run towards the sound. Or at least, I tried to. I found myself jerked to a halt and almost tumbled to the ground. I turned, and saw Sildri holding onto my arm with both hands. "What are you-"

"Don't go." I'd never heard her speak like that before. Not when I'd met her in Darnassus and asked her to come fight with me again. Not when I'd nearly died at Elwynn. She spoke with absolute certainty. She said it again. "Don't go."

I turned away and tried to move off again as my brain shouted _comrade in trouble! _"That was Erinys, we have to-"

"If you go she'll hate you forever." She looked into my eyes and I could see fire there. "Trust me."

I stopped trying to get away, and she let go. I thought for a second about running anyway, my ears listening for another scream or worse, but I heard nothing. "Alright," I said quietly. "Alright."

"Let's go to the entrance." We both looked around us, at the endless rows of departed, and the weapons and armour they had taken with them to the beyond. "I think we're done here."

I agreed. God, I agreed.

* * *

We were quiet as we gathered back at the entrance to the tomb and its great sliding slabs of doors. Maybe it was the fact that we had just spent hours walking through an army, or maybe that we'd went through them like picky shoppers looking for the best deals, but none of us really felt like talking. We had all found something though.

Sara was wearing something that looked like a leather version of my own armour, all dark browns and greys, knives and other weaponry strapped across her with leather buckles. The daggers at her side were nasty-looking twists of steel, designed to gouge and tear whatever they went through.

Duran was adjusting the links on something that could have been chainmail or thin plate, all dark bronze and midnight-blue steel. The gun slung over his shoulder was like my sword; simple, un-flashy. Something that did its job and wasn't meant to be displayed in a cabinet.

Only Sonder and Erinys looked different from the rest of us. Sonder's armour was simple like my own, but instead of dark steel and leather, his own plate was all reds and golds, and the hammer he carried looked heavy enough to break a castle gate down. "Not bad hey?"

"A little…noticeable. We good to go?" I looked at Erinys from the corner of my eye. The armour she wore was dark brown, ribbed as it went from the chest to the waist for greater movement, and the shoulders alone looked like they could kill a man, with metal spikes jutting from the bottom and high plates to stop a sword from coming over the top. The blade she carried was…it looked nastier than Sara's daggers. Serrated blades ran up from the hilt to the tip, and it ended in a huge curving hook, shaped to look like the mouth of a lion. It…it…

_I know that sword._

"Are you alright?" Erinys asked, as if daring me to respond. For a half-second I wanted to ask about the unearthly cry from inside the tombs, but thought better of it. Sara stood next to her, and from the way she looked so pale and kept glancing between us, I knew I wouldn't _have _to ask her.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

It was back. Nuts.

"_Did you find what you seek."_

"Our thanks, old one," Duran responded to the Nerubian. "We did."

"_You will go north."_

"We will."

The tall spider-scarab stood there motionless – _really_ motionless – like a statue, as if it had to digest that information. After a few moments, it spoke again in that dry raspy clicking that barely sounded like a voice at all. _"When last you came you talked of luck."_

"We did, yes," Duran replied, looking confused. From the looks on the others, they were too.

"_Where your path takes you, you shall require a quantity. Take ours with you."_

"I…we will. Thank you, old one."

"_We no longer require it."_

We walked in silence, back through the towering obelisks of the dark temple-city, back up through the tunnels burrowed by some gigantic creature. Finally I felt the cold grasping at me again from under my new armour, and twisted my cloak a little tighter. It didn't really help much as we emerged from the dark – but warm – underground and back to the ice-cold grip of the surface. The sun was falling now, casting blood-red swathes of colour into the air. I turned back to see the Nerubian stood at the precipice, half-hidden in shadow. "Thank you," I said, and meant it, "for everything."

"_A debt has been paid, one of our last. Go with our luck, child of man."_ it twisted a little on its strange spine. "_Go with our hope, child of the makers."_

I turned and saw Saga sitting there in the snow, watching us as she perched above the burrow, her knees brought up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, sat like a child waiting for something. She looked smaller, more vulnerable. "Hey."

"Hello Elias. We should go."

There was no disagreement, from any of us. I waved once, but the Nerubian didn't twitch so much as a muscle. We walked away from the burrow, headed east along the road, Saga now not ranging out to either side of us but together with the rest of the team. The last glimpse I saw of Duran's 'old one' were eight eyes like black pearls, staring out at us from the darkness of the tunnel. Then with a flick it turned and vanished, and was gone. I felt Sildri slip into step beside me as we headed out back on the road to the northernmost part of the world, and for some reasons as we left the hidden city behind I felt a sense of loss I couldn't place. Like there was something I had missed due to my own failings, and would never have a chance to find again.

I put it behind me, and walked on.


End file.
